HTML. Believe it or not, sometimes it’s just best to use good old HTML right on your website, especially if you’re all sharing is a small amount of text. Quick, easy and it can’t be modified or lost in translation. Users simply copy and paste the information they need.

Adobe .pdf. The venerable .pdf (portable document format) has come a long way since it was introduced by Adobe in 1993. There are many benefits to using a .pdf, the chief being that it’s now ubiquitous. Almost every PC manufactured comes with Adobe’s free Acrobat reader, so having the right software to view the document is almost never a problem. The .pdf can also be edited and manipulated by end users who have Adobe’s full Acrobat software package, unless security settings have been enabled to prevent it. A .pdf is usually a pretty authentic representation of the original document, whether it’s a Word file, a photograph, or other content file. A downside is that Adobe’s reader software has become bloated and annoying, frequently reminding users of the need to upgrade and running a continual update checker in the background that may (along with the dozens of other updaters for iTunes and other software that are probably running on your PC) slow you down.

Scribd. Scribd is a popular, free online document sharing provider introduced in 2006 that not only allows users to view documents, but it opens up both the document contributor and the user to the wider world of social document sharing. Much like YouTube for videos, Scribd invites users to browse documents by subject and displays featured and “popular now” documents. Use Scribd if your audience is wider than the accounting department, a few clients, or the Delhi office, because social, interactive and sharing are the names of the game. The best part about Scribd (and its competitor Docstoc) is that no software is necessary—everything takes place through your browser at scribd.com.

Docstoc. Introduced in 2007, Docstoc is very similar to Scribd, with a few notable differences. It didn’t allow personal accounts (only business) until February of this year, and while its basic service is free, it also offers a paid service to host commercial documents. Which one to use? Try them both and see which one you like best.

Google Docs. More than just an online document sharing service, Google Docs is an entire suite of applications designed to compete with the Microsoft Office suite and also free, open-source competitors like Oracle’s Open Office. Google Docs is a good choice for commercial users who wish to restrict access to specified individuals—sort of the opposite of Scribd and Docstoc. Like Scribd and Docstoc, Google Docs takes place entirely in your browser, so there is no need to download software and update it continuously. Another bonus of using a Google product is that Google does anything and everything these days, so it’s usually easy to integrate your Google files into applications like Google Calendar, Picasa, YouTube, Google Earth, external programs like Microsoft Outlook—you name it, and Google is probably offering a way to integrate with it.

So there you go. There are more services and options out there, but these are the most popular and proven. Just don’t let us catch you posting links to Microsoft Word documents on your website any longer!

The poll questioned more than 1,600 women about their Facebook use. The results may surprise you:

More than a quarter (26 percent) admit to getting up in the middle of the night to check their Facebook messages and status updates, while 34 percent say that logging in to the FB is the first thing they do in the morning. Nearly four in 10 (39 percent) are self-described “Facebook addicts.”

Watch out, Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone: 44 percent of women surveyed use Facebook for TV and music reviews.

You too, CNN: 48 percent of those polled use Facebook to stay up on the news more than they use traditional media outlets.

Sadly, while 63 percent of those polled use Facebook for business networking, a shocking four in 10 women polled think that it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated. Maybe even more surprising, three in 10 think that photos of themselves making lewd gestures are appropriate.

What does this say about the power of Facebook and social media in general?

First, the grip that social media hold over young women is impressive—that four in 10 describe themselves as “addicts” speaks to the scale of the Facebook phenomenon.

Second, the poll shows the real threat that Facebook and social media pose to traditional and even online news sites like CNN.com. With nearly every news site offering a “share this on Facebook” link with each story, Facebook in many ways becomes a giant news aggregator. And not only that—it’s an aggregator that tailors news to what interests Facebook users and their friends. This means people who use Facebook for news may end up with a biased view based on their own tastes and not what’s truly newsworthy.

All media and publishers need to pay attention to results like this and determine how social media factors into their plans. The warning sign is clear: Ignore Facebook at your own peril!

While newspapers long excelled in delivering local news, the Internet is less fertile ground—for now. While online national and international news sites such as CNN.com and Yahoo! news, and newsy, political blogs like Huffington Post and the Drudge Report are wildly popular, the local news scene has been hit-and-miss, depending on whether or not local media established a strong online presence. Social media have filled in the gaps where local media have fallen short, helping users to stay connected with happenings online while sharing information and interacting in real time—something that print newspapers can’t do.

The decision by major media companies like AOL and Gannett to go local from the top down—delivered by a national company to the local market—brings up several questions that remain unanswered. First, what about credibility? Consumers can smell an outsider a mile away. If the hyper-local media offerings put forth by these companies don’t “sound” local, with real local knowledge, then consumers will tune them out.

For example, many of the traffic and weather reports given during drive-time on AM news talk stations aren’t originating in a “traffic center” in the local studio. They’re being phoned in on a high-quality digital telephone line from a desk at a location that can be hundreds or thousands of miles away. And sometimes it shows—the announcer will mispronounce a town or street name that any local would know. Hiring local writers and reporters will be key to the credibility of these efforts.

Second, local newspapers aren’t ignorant of the fact that local news sells. In an age when the Internet is a far more efficient source for national and international news, offering up-to-the-minute breaking news and a wide variety of perspectives, the local newspaper—and its online counterpart—remain the best place for Little League news, local human interest stories, and other news that the national companies don’t cover well for obvious reasons. They’re sure to mount a strong challenge, paralleling the fight between mom-and-pop retail stores and WalMart in many communities around the country. What’s uncertain is whether the local news media can be more successful than the mom and pop stores have been.

The battle for hyper-local news dominance is worth watching because it’s part of the much broader debate and battle for the future of the publishing industry. Some major players have decided that this is where at least part of their future is at. We’ll see.

(Why would Cisco say this? Possibly because Apple has sold 3 million iPads in a few weeks, and Cisco doesn’t want to be seen as being trounced in the pad market like others have been trounced by the iPhone in the smartphone market.)

What is really meaningful about the Cisco announcement is that others are venturing into the pad market. I’ve maintained that monopolies on technology aren’t good for the future of digital media, and historically haven’t been good for Apple, either. However, Apple is on an i-roll the past several years, from iPod to iPhone to iPad, not only driving forward the cutting edge of what it means to read a magazine, but defining what’s cool as well.

Unlike the iPad, the Cius’ operating system is Android, meaning that it’s not proprietary and is therefore more user-friendly for application developers.

I can’t help but think that while Apple has set the bar and become the clear, runaway leader in the pad market, that we should be careful about using terms like “developing content for the iPad” or “putting our magazine on the iPad.” Why? Because the iPad is brand name that’s become synonymous with a product, like Kleenex, Xerox, iPod, Coke, Q-Tip and others.

Those of us in the publishing and media world should think less about Apple and think more about terms like mobile and immersive, because that’s what pads are, whether Apple makes them, or Cisco, or Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com. Or even if our readers are viewing content on an Acer netbook. The future is not Apple—the future is the pad, and Apple makes the best pad right now. They might make the best pad tomorrow, too, although history says that the first out of the gate aren’t always the ones that win (does anyone have a “Palm Pilot”?).

Since Gerri Knilan’s first post on the iPad, the Federal Trade Commisson has decided to launch an investigation into Apple’s policy of not allowing makers of competing devices to gather data from their ads on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. This data is considered indispensable, because it reveals how effective the ads are, and by extension how much companies can charge for them.

Gerri mentioned the iPad’s exclusivity—long an Apple business practice, dating back to the introduction of the Macintosh—as a potential reason that the computer and personal electronic giant’s new iPad device might face resistance. And now the FTC is providing that resistance, at least in the form of an investigation to determine whether barring competitors like Google from gathering ad data is unfair.

To me, this is more of the same from Apple, who in recent years has sought complete vertical integration of the user experience for its products. It’s no surprise that they want to restrict competitor’s access to ad data, effectively rendering competitors ad’s worthless and impossible to price.

I just don’t see this kind of monolithic approach working in 2010, when choices for consumers are limitless, and competitors are plenty. Apple has become the talking head from their famous 1984 Macintosh commercial:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heart wants

Car and Driver editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman opines on the iPad in the July issue, and makes a good point: no one really knows what the end result will be when it comes to media on the iPad. Says Alterman, “The device’s full impact on the media business won’t be clear for a while…As Woody Allen once infamously and lecherously confessed, ‘The heart wants what it wants.’ Well, media platforms are just as perverse.”

Size doesn’t matter?

More from the pop auto literature: a letter to the editor in the August 2010 issue of Four Wheeler:

I was disappointed to receive only 98 pages with Four Wheeler when my Diesel Power magazine came with 186 pages. That is a ridiculous difference since for the same price of my Diesel Power subscription I am getting half the magazine with you.

The editor’s response:

The actual size if the magazine is dependent on the number of pages of advertising we generate each month. Diesel Power has more pages of advertising, so naturally, it’s thicker than outs. Then again, what’s really more important—quantity or quality?

This, of course, runs counter to Apple’s business model. Apple has enjoyed success with iTunes, largely because songs are a buck, about the same price per song as a compact disc.

However, most digital magazine subscriptions on the iPad are a lot higher. (Some, like news from the BBC and NPR, are free.) The Wall Street Journal is $3.99 a week; Time and Popular Science are $4.99 per issue. The problem is that you can get much of the same (or similar) content for free online, often from those publications’ own websites. Moreover, the paper version of Popular Science is just $10 per year on Amazon.com and Time is $20.

So the question is: will the masses pay a steep price to purchase the iPad, and will they pay considerably more to receive content on the iPad, compared to what’s available elsewhere?

Maybe—sales already number in the millions after just a few months. But Apple and its competitors should look toward two other media for answers on what consumers will pay for, and what they won’t.

Smartphones offer iPad-like functionality for far less

For example, the smart phone—a technology that runs in the $50 to $250 range—is a proven seller. More than 45 million Americans have smart phones. Whether it’s a Blackberry, an iPhone, Droid or other device, they’re all compact, portable, relatively affordable, and deliver the Internet for a relatively small monthly fee of around $100, give or take. The iPad will set users back nearly four times that much on the high end, and 10 times as much for the low-end models. And with Apple’s a-la-cart programming, users will receive only the content for which they have paid.

Speaking of a-la-cart programming, Apple and other emerging technology producers should take a cue from the much-maligned cable TV industry when it comes to offerings. The cable model is simple: one flat fee per month gets you unlimited access to a large variety of channels. Rather than nickel-and-dime consumers for each online publication, Apple and iPad competitors should strike deals with content providers and offer bulk packages for their users. Tiered subscriptions could provide access to premium content.

So while the iPad is a clever, cool device that does allow for an immersive experience, it has hurdles to overcome. Bring down the price to the point where the iPad becomes “throwaway” and add some sense and sanity to the pricing structure. When that happens, iPad-like devices truly can change the way we view media, as advertised.

But there are a few things about the iPad that give me reason to think that it may not be the game-changer the blogosphere would have you believe.

The iPad is a neat device. Like most things Apple makes, it looks cool. It has great form and probably pretty good functionality, too.

And like most products Apple makes, it’s expensive. The iPad starts out at $499. And the really good ones, with 3G cellular connectivity and lots of memory, can set you back as much as $829, not including monthly cellular service. That’s a lot of money to spend on a device for reading the morning news while mouthing a crumbly doughnut and slurping a cup of coffee in a vanpool, cab or train on the way to work.

Also like most products Apple makes, it’s exclusive. If you want content for the iPad, you have to go through an Apple website, ala the iPod and iTunes. Magazine publishers who want their titles on the iPad have to give Apple 30 percent of the take, and don’t have much, if any, control over user data.

Of course, this is hardly the first time Apple has taken this approach to business. The year is 1984, and computer maker Apple introduces the Macintosh, an incredibly cool, futuristic device (sound familiar?) that promises to redefine the growing personal computer market and upend the lead that IBM had forged with its PC platform.

Source: arstechnica.com

It didn’t happen. IBM licensed its computer architecture out to third party manufacturers (ever heard of Dell, HP, or Gateway?). Apple didn’t. And today, Apple’s OSX operating system—by most accounts sturdier, slicker and faster than Windows (the heir to the IBM legacy)—has just a five percent market share. Windows has 92 percent.

You could tell a similar story about Sony and the Betamax, or America Online. Technology today is not about exclusivity. Technology, specifically (and especially) the internet, is about freedom of choice. That’s the appeal of the internet. It’s a wide open playground, a limitless library of information, with no one telling consumers from whom they must purchase their songs, movies or information.

In subsequent posts, I’ll talk about what I think needs to happen to make the iPad—or at least devices with iPad-like functionality—the revolutionary device that its boosters think it will be.

Social media? Bah! Humbug!

behind that of their B2C colleagues, according to the report.

For example, 60 percent of B2B marketers have no one on staff dedicated full-time to social media, compared to just 46 percent of B2C marketers. Only 10 percent of B2B marketers had engaged an outside agency for social media marketing, compared to 28 percent of B2C marketers. Most revealing was the level of acceptance of social media among executives: 36 percent of B2B marketers reported low executive interest in social media, compared to just 9 percent among B2C marketers.

This begs the question, why? Here are a few reasons that B2B marketers haven’t fully embraced social media marketing:

• B2B marketers are ROI-driven. A B2B sale can be literally years in the making, involving strategic organizational decisions and budgeting on the part of the buyer, as well as significant investment of the part of the marketer. The stakes are too high to gamble in a field where ROI has proven especially hard to determine.
• Likewise, B2C decisions are emotional, while B2B are logical. A tweet may drive thousands of consumers to impulsively download the latest hit pop song from iTunes, but it’s unlikely to sell an enterprise solution to a major manufacturing company.
• It’s generational. Social media is still largely a youth-driven phenomenon. As more top executives retire and are replaced by marketers who have long embraced social media as a part of their lives, you may see B2B marketers embrace social media more consistently.
• B2B marketing isn’t brand-driven. B2B companies are often entrenched in a niche in which there may be relatively few players, compared to a typical B2C industry. Therefore, social media’s role as an effective brand promoter is not as effective.

White Horse provides a spot-on summary of the state of B2B and social media by stating that the end result for B2B and social media will be a happy marriage of new and traditional marketing methods:

“We believe strongly that the ultimate evolutionary stage of social media marketing is its integration with traditional tactics, and B2B marketers are uniquely well-positioned to make this leap. Social tactics align more naturally with highly relationship-driven B2B tactics than they do with awareness-centered B2C tactics.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ryan’s “last word in social networking” isn’t real (thankfully), but unfortunately, it’s not too far from the truth. It begs the question, how much social media does one really need, and what purpose does it serve?

Many in the business world today, and certainly professional communicators (journalists, authors, marketers and advertisers), find themselves addicted to social media. As Kelly says in the video, “I can’t control what I say to people. I spend the whole day talking.” But to what purpose?

Do you ever get the feeling that some social media exist only to serve themselves? They’re like the teenager who needs a job to pay for gas so he can drive to work. Or the stay-at-home parent who goes back to work–so they can afford daycare. Are we “woofing” just for the sake of woofing, with no business purpose or tangible results?

That’s why when considering a strategy for promoting your business, it’s important to carefully decide in which kinds of media your company will invest. Consider your audience and identify what features of social media will most appeal to it. And remember, social media is only one component of your promotional strategy. Nothing compares with the depth of information available on a corporate website, in a white paper, a book, or an article in a trade publication. While social media is instant (and face it–fun), it’s not always substantial enough to provide the information a potential client needs to generate the sale.

Our advice–steer clear of the “dog pack”!

The blogosphere reaction has been, as you might imagine, negative. Generally, reaction falls into two camps: those who think that the publishers are missing the point, and those that think, yes, the Internet is indeed killing print media, and good riddance to their exclusive club and their turned-up noses.

A few examples:

Kent Anderson in the blog the Scholarly Kitchen: “With the iPad only weeks away from shipping, it’s an odd time for magazine publishers to spend $90 million to very publicly throw their digital editions under the bus.”

From Kit Eaton in the blog Fast Company: “With the dead-tree publishing industry in a bit of a mess right across the board, and a huge, difficult digital upheaval threatening to arrive any moment, you may well argue that spending a whopping $90 million on a printed-mag advert campaign is a little silly.”

And from Bo Sacks on the Print CEO blog: “Once again, they completely miss the damn target, this time by a mile, a 90 million dollar mile…I guess my complaint is their marksmanship. There isn’t any. The people who put this campaign together to protect print don’t have a clue what they are doing and who to aim at. It is also clear that the instigators of this campaign don’t use the Internet or any digital component therein.”

A rare positive, or at least, non-negative came from Rebecca Chandler on the Real Estate Book Blog: “My experience in our industry has been that most of those who would like you to think that print is dead and ineffective have a stake in influencing real estate agents to invest in online advertising.”

Perhaps the most compelling, and accurate, assessment came from Gavin St. Ours on the Gavin Show blog: “The problem at the heart of their “Internet vs. magazines” argument is that they’ve incorrectly labeled the Internet as a medium. The Internet is a delivery tool for media, like the printing press…Magazine industry leaders appear to not understand the gravity of that idea. You can hear it in the first few seconds of the video…The real discussion is this: In order to stay competitive in a digital world, magazines are going to have to find a way to deliver the immersive experience of their analog versions on digital platforms. That means using the Internet as a delivery tool.”

St. Ours is dead on the money in his assessment, as was Popular Science Editor Mark Jannot, as David Perry discussed in March. At Trade Press Services, we believe there is tremendous value to be found in both traditional print media and emerging, interactive, online media. The key always has been, and always will be, providing value to the user of the medium, whether that means compelling stories, helpful advice, accurate data, or timely reporting.

Both print and online forms have a place and serve a purpose. While a magazine cannot display video or up-to-the-second reader comments, it is extremely portable, easy to use, inexpensive, and easy to share with anyone, regardless of the user’s technical sophistication. (When $300 book readers and computer pads become so common as to be throwaway items, that may change. Until that time…)

Trade Press Services routinely helps companies place articles in both traditional print journals and online media. At Trade Press Services, content will always be king, and that means well-crafted, thought-provoking, bylined articles submitted to the best publications exclusively for our clients. We look forward to the innovations that online publishing will continue to bring, and also expect that the traditional print magazine will still command a strong position in the battle for readers’ eyes for a long time to come.