Putting Web, Social & Mobile To Good Use In News

DLD has an habit to go beyond the buzzwords, to explore the real-world truth behind the concepts. So naturally, when a star-studded panel (Katharina Borchert of Spiegel Online,  Donata Hopfen of BILD digital and Svetlana Mironyuk of RIA Novosti) discussed what’s new in news, honest answers are expected, as well as hints of an healthy competition among panelists.

First item on the menu: online media. It is really a different job to publish news online than on print? For Borchert, at the Spiegel Online, “the scope of what we cover online is broader, but we are very much hard-news driven”, similarly to the coverage of the weekly magazine. Their work benefits from the format, too: “linking to things on the web, including blogs, can be considered original sources.”

Hopfen told the audience that Bild online works with more short stories, and is primarily picture-driven. Both composition of the webpage and exclusivity of content are crucial for them and their 30 million Unique Visitors a month (vs 11 million for the Spiegel Online). As a (state-owned) russian news agency, it was easier for Ria Novosti to adapt to the Web and its audience than a print publication, explained Mironyuk.

What about mobile technology and women, the moderator, Hubert Burda Media’s very own Jean-Paul Schmetz asked. Mironyuk said that in Russia, women don’t consume news in the office, they listen to the radio or use mobile devices. Bild’s usage peaks for mobile connections are at 7am and 11pm, when one wakes up or goes to bed, explained Hopfen, before adding “It means we have to work 24/7.” Borchert said that, so far, the Spiegel mobile users were either very much sport-driven or looking for a quick update on a breaking news.

Last but not least, the role of social media. Is it truly a game changer? For the CEO of SPIEGEL Online, the ambivalence of putting your content out and having other sources of traffic is big. For instance, the question of the Facebook reader remains. Hopfen was more skeptical: “we have Facebook channels, it works well, but it’s not like Bild drive more than 1% of our traffic from Facebook”.

For Spiegel Online, “Facebook drives 3% of our traffic to the site. But it’s not about figures, it’s to stay relevant and reach the young audience” complemented Borchert. Bringing an exterior perspective, Mironyuk concluded with a twist: “in social media in Russia, users feel less control from the State. So they express their feelings. As a result, social media are seen as new media and news websites are seen as old, mainstream.”

As the new generation gets its news almost exclusively from social media, news websites seems to be facing an new competitor, formerly thought to be an ally.

What’s Next for Social Russia?

As Facebook is far from the main Russian social network, the industry is highly competitive and global players are tempted to dive in the fight.

Social media Odnoklassniki is competing with leader of the market Vkontakte, his CEO Ilya Shirokov now claims that the gap in users is less than 5%, from 50% a few years ago. With the increasing Internet penetration in the region, “the Russian-speaking market for social medai will double in the next few year” according to him, providing his company, and others, with a lot of opportunities

There’s an increasing proximity betwen different social media, but beware of negative reactions from users: “we were pushed back by users when we tried automatic content cross uploading to Odnoklassniki & MM” admitted Shirokov. Users had two social media profiles for two separate circles that did not overlap.

From left to right: Ilya Shirokov (CEO of Odnoklassniki), Gene Sokolov  Head of Badoo Russia and moderator Jamillah Knowles (UK Editor, The Next Web)

Global player Badoo is making a push at the moment to get in the Russian market. This social network, whose specifity is to find new contacts instead of connecting existing ones, but has also been used for dating, now claims a growth of several thousands new members per day in the country.

Both panelists agreed that mobile phone has a much higher penetration potential for the developing world and both websites tried e-commerce, another hope for revenues in social media. Badoo even created its own payment plugin and both accepts many means of payment, like SMS.

Ilya Shirokov (CEO of Odnoklassniki)

For Shirokov, the future remains “hard to predict. Blogs were thought to be the end of the story, then social media arrived and they changed. Social changed everything, sharing photos, games, the trend continues with music and video”.

Curation, that is having your social networks do tailored recommendation to its users based on the infos they have on them, is a aspect Odnoklassniki is going to develop in the immediate future, announced its CEO. Immediatly, Sokolov interjected that curation has to be done right and that he never saw one good example online.

For him, the future of social media is threefold: “local, instant and connected to the real world.”

Facebook Adds Over $15 billion to European Economy, says COO

Facebook added 15.3 billion dollars in value to the European economy last year, mostly by driving 32 billion dollars in revenue, said the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg.

This, she said, according to a report released today by accounting firm Deloitte and Touche at the DLD Conference in Munich.

Sandberg appeared as the closing act of the DLD12, and had attracted one of the biggest crowds of the conference. 

“Just as we saw in the United States, the Internet, social media and Facebook are driving economic growth [in Europe]”, she said during her keynote speech.

This is a notion that has been shared by many of the other speakers throughout the past few days, but still Facebook remains an industry frontrunner.

Facebook alone, she said, added 230,000 jobs in Europe in 2011 through its enabling of businesses and new networks.

In the app economy, one of the fastest growing online industries of all, the strongest European player is Germany, she added.

Although the numbers are indeed positive, she also issued a warning to her many listeners.

“We need to recognize that this growth is not going to fuel itself, we need to make sure that we’re investing in technology, and in education”, said Sandberg.

This puts an end to the perception that social media is “trivial and silly”, she said, as developing countries increasingly find in the Internet opportunities for economic growth that can create more jobs and enable small businesses.

A clear message and one that the attendees will surely carry with them as the keynote, and by that also the DLD12 itself, came to an end. 

Don’t Let Bad Customer Reviews Ruin Your Brand

A successful brand is made when its creators know how to react to a negative comment from a customer online and avoid disaster, said Bernd Beetz, CEO of global beauty company Coty. 

“This notion that we go out and we listen to the consumer who tells you what your brand should be is a disaster”, said Beetz to a packed room.

A company, he explained, needs to know what the brand stands for, what it means, and the customer will appreciate the authenticity. Companies that connect with their customers online and through social media need to learn to extract the useful information form each negative review.

“Today, you need to impact the consumer’s life in a positive way. For some its a picture, a video, a game. For a brand there are different ways to do that and you can only achieve it if you have the right corporate culture”, said Beetz.

Sharing the stage with Beetz were Diesel cretor Renzo Rosso and social media entrepreneur and blogger Sasha Wilkins, who moderated the discussion.

The power of celebrity has played a key role in the success of Diesel clothing, said Rosso.

“Celebrities are on the news, on the media, all the time”, he said.

“People don’t care if the government hass done something nice, they care if Lady Gaga has a new boyfriend”.

How Can Social Media Help Your Business?

Time has changed, in favour of social media. A research by Buddy Media and comScore found that one out of every five minutes spent on internet were in fact spent on social media sites. And among the social media sites, Facebook attracted nearly three quarters of the traffic.

Due to the sheer volume of traffic that social media now attract, it is therefore completely sensible for consumer-focused companies to adapt their marketing strategy to the new internet landscape.

In the first session of the second day of DLD12, Michael Lazerow from Buddy Media and Linda Abraham from comScore, both successful entrepreneurs shared their insights on how social media are changing purchasing and how can company better improve their social media based marketing.

A breakdown of time spent on Facebook shows people mostly stay on the homepage and read the newsfeeds. That means companies need to accordingly spend the most time to find the most appropriate key message to deliver on the homepage, said Abraham.

Understanding the fan base is the next step. Abraham showed a demographic analysis of Starbucks as an example: a research found that fans of Starbucks online are much younger than the store visitors. ‘’That information has a key impact on what Starbuck says online to their fans, and where to say it.’’ said Abraham.

The research on Walmart’s online campaign also found that not the fans, but also their friends are an important resource for the companies. Abraham continued:”Fans are happy to share their fan discounts to their friends. This means companies need to dive into the friend circle of the fans and amplify the impact their marketing strategy.’’

The Future of the EU’s Data Protection Laws

Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, used her keynote speech at DLD12 to outline the future of the EU’s data protection laws.

This week, the European Commission will release its proposal for a regulation to update the data protection directive from 1995. The new law will do three things: first, it will create a legal certainty for businesses. Second, it will simplify the regulatory environment. And third, it will provide clear rules for international data transfer. At the moment, businesses lose €2.3bn a year because of compliance costs. The presents laws, she said, are “completely useless”

But the highlight of the regulation, and the most talked about aspect, is the “right to be forgotten”. She defined it as “The right for an individual to withdraw their consent for the processing of personal data that they have given out themselves.”

Ms Reding vigorously defended this new right for Europeans. It is not, she said, bad for business. It will help them build trust with their customers. Nor is it absolute. There are cases where there are legitimate, legally justified reasons to retain data. But most importantly, she said, “The right to be forgotten cannot amount to a total erasure of history. Neither must it take precedence over freedom of expression and freedom of media.”