The Next Web

Online Financial Times readers increasing, fast!

Written on July 29, 2008 – 7:29 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor

Picture by Kenny Mathieson (CC)

Its not a question whether newspapers are depended of their online services anymore. It seems that newspapers are making the switch to digital, and that income can be found in advertisements rather then subscription based income. An example is English business paper Financial Times, that recently reached an important tipping point – The newspaper currently have more online then printed readers.

According to Financial Times owner Pearson the daily circulation of the business newspaper has been 350.000 readers for a long time now, but the site ’s online visitors have tripled to half-a-million in just one year.

The increase in online users is the result of a successful digital strategy of the media company; the news company introduced a policy that enforces the frequent readers, that read more then five articles to subscribe to the site. Income from online visitors is generated with advertisements. The digital subscriptions and online advertisement counted for 20% eight years ago but increased to 63% of turnover this year.

I read the Financial Times almost everyday, and I really like to read the paper on my way to work, like many others I actually like to read from paper. But I guess that the Kindle, iPhone and other E-paper gizmo’s will be making digital newspaper reading more convenient in the future. You’ll never know, soon you might be asked: “Mommy/Daddy, can you tell me again about the time when you were reading printed newspapers?”

I hope you like that post!

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Financial Times, Newspaper, Newspapers, online advertising, online news

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China’s earthquake online after shock: Sina goes English

Written on May 19, 2008 – 3:56 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

China’s most popular news and sports site Sina has launched an English version to provide international readers with the latest on the earthquake that took 32.000 lives and made millions of people homeless. Sina president and CEO Charles Chao told AFP: “We have chosen to launch our English news site now as we would like to provide up-to-minute coverage of the earthquake for overseas people who are concerned about the tragedy”. Quite a digital after shock, if you’d ask me. But just a nasty little thought here, is it really an aftershock? Or does a media hype, how terrible it may be, comes in handy for China’s leading portal?

Chao: “Over the longer term, we intend to make this site a window for international communities to have an easy access to China-related information and to have better understanding about modern China.” Right, there it is. Sina is just an ordinary media giant with a healthy ambition: to conquer the world. Revenues are expected to grow with 30 percent over the next few years, thanks to the Olympics, so Chao and his executives probably aren’t afraid of investing some capital in international expansion.

You don’t here me complain though. I’m sure there are some Sina editors that genuinely want to tell the world how their fellow citizens are suffering. Yet I just don’t buy the noble words by Chao.

china, News, news site, olympics, online news, sina

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