Dan Pacheco

1
Participatory Media Tapping niche
communities to grow audience

• Dan Pacheco
• Senior Manager of Digital Products
• The Bakersfield Californian
• dpacheco_at_bakersfield.com / dan_at_futureforecast.com

2
The Bakersfield Californian

• Independently owned for 140 years
• We face same challenges as other papers
• Print circulation rising, but not with every
  segment (like youth)
• Flagship site, bakersfield.com, focused on print
• Strong desire to innovate, but most energy was
  consumed by daily operations
• New Products Group formed to
• Create momentum for innovation
• Start new brands to serve audiences and
  advertisers whose needs were not being met by the
  newspaper
• Explore technology options, leading to the
  development of our own community publishing
  platform

3
Fragementation a primary concern

• A quote that sums it all up
• Traditional business models are based on
  aggregating large passive audiences and holding
  them captive during advertising interruptions.
  In the new-media era, audiences will
  occasionally be large, but often small, and
  usually tiny. Instead of a few large capital-rich
  media giants competing with one another for these
  audiences, it will be small firms and individuals
  competing or, more often, collaborating. Some
  will be making money from the content they
  create others will not and will not mind,
  because they have other motives.
• The Economist April 20, 2006 print edition

4
How fragmentation affects media

• People have less time, more choices than ever
• Longer commutes up 50 since 1990
• Newspaper competes with web, cell, iPod, video
  games
• Social networking becoming major mass medium
• Myspace.com increased four-fold to 80 million in
  just one year!
• The line between reporter and reader is blurring.
• Collective blogs (citizen journalism), re-editing
  and hour glass style replacing reverse pyramid
  through ratings comments (Digg.com)
• Readers expect more control
• Point and counterpoint between reporters,
  bloggers, readers
• Self-serve advertising is making headway outside
  of our walls

(Source 5/1/06 Newsweek)
5
Community fights fragmentation

• Participation brings people together
• Successful community products serve niches.
• Mirrors life. People with specific interests like
  to connect w/ others.
• You can serve many niches with minimal staff
• Let the community help! Self-serve publishing,
  ads, everything.
• In the future, much of our editorial, ad staffs
  will evolve into thought leaders and facilitators
  of publishing and conversations.

6
Bakotopia.com and Bakomatic

• Created Bakotopia.com, niche participatory Web
  site for young people in Bakersfield.
• Intentionally separate from newspaper.
• Underground flavor.
• Created a generic, multi-brand community platform
  that let us do the same for many audiences.
• One site is now 7 and growing!
• Now also serves our flagship site, Bakersfield.com

7
Platform capabilities

• Envisioned as a multi-product platform for
  interactivity and community generated content.
• Key concepts
• One database for users and content
• Centered around persona and self-expression
• Configurable and skinnable by brand
• Ability for brands to share users and content
• Each brand targets unique audience (the front
  door) but we can cross-promote horizontally.

8
The power of a local network

• We harness the rising tide of a local network
  while preserving the power of our unique brands
• New insights into consumer behavior
• We know who does what on each site and across
  sites
• True early indicators - well see trends as they
  form
• New revenue opportunities
• Self-serve, opt-in, audience-based advertising
  centered on interests and topics.
• Bring social networking to the generic business
  directory - become a online direct-marketing
  platform
• New ways to cross-promote our brands and content
• Easy to create new sites and grow the network by
  giving self-serve tools to the community.

9
The local network drives growth
Already, niche sites have increased companys
pageviews 20 in just one year! And were only
just beginning
Total network
Just the new product sites
10
Social hub (Bakotopia.com)
Flavor 1

• Targeted at Bakersfield youth young at heart
  (18-35).
• Launched Jan. 2005. Craigslist opened a site in
  Bakersfield the day after we did.
• Winner of NAA Digital Edge Award.

http//www.bakotopia.com
Key Metrics 12,000 daily pageviews (360,000 per
month) 1,500 registered users regularly post
edit profiles
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OK, and this was pretty cool, too
Flavor 1 Social Hub

• Its not every day that youre on the cover of
  The Wall Street Journal, above the fold!

12
Bakotopias Value Proposition
Flavor 1 Social Hub

• Driving behaviors
• Bands, events, socializing. No news, but people
  post reviews.
• People post things for sale, musicians wanted
  ads.
• Users create profiles, and bands upload music.

• Grass-roots marketing, profiles, social
  networking are drivers.

Rank Feature
Home page Posting stuff Viewing
categories Viewing profiles Viewing
interests Reading content
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
The users are the content! Note that profiles and
connecting beat content in traffic hands down!
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Persona its all about ME!
Flavor 1 Social Hub

• User profiles let people
• Express themselves and their interests
• Bands showcase music
• Link to friends profiles
• Rate each other

View Recent Profiles
14
Band Radio Podcast
Flavor 1 Social Hub

• Bands can upload music to their profiles
• We approve new tunes, then hands-off.
• Best stuff shows up on home page, in Bakotunes
  Podcast.

Play Bakotunes
15
Interests Find Your Vibe
Flavor 1 Social Hub
(View Recent Interests)
16
How Interests Work
Flavor 1 Social Hub
Find people who share your vibe in just a few
clicks. (Try it here)
Nice circular traffic that builds pageviews!
17
Social Networking
Flavor 1 Social Hub
Will you be my friend?
Let the users market you by marketing themselves!
18
Citizen media
Flavor 2

• Northwest Voice was the first citizen
  journalism product created by a U.S. newspaper
• Expanded to Southwest Voice
• People submit articles that are printed
  home-delivered.
• Kids accomplishments, recipes, local issues

NW Voice Metrics 7,000 10,000 pvs / day2,225
registered users (SW Voice just launched)
http//www.northwestvoice.com/http//www.swvoice.
com/
19
Más Affirmational Media
Flavor 3

• A weekly magazine and web site targeted to
  English-speaking Hispanics
• Affirmational media acknowledges something
  thats uniquely a part of you.More of a magazine
  style.
• Has strong traditional media model, with a staff
  of 8!
• Planning to enable user-contributed stories

URL http//www.masbakersfield.com/.
20
Newcomers network
Flavor 4

• Newcomers can use profiles and friends feature
  to meet others who share their vibe
• Get to know the community through other people
• Find out where to get good sushi in Bakersfield!

URL http//newtobakersfield.com
21
Interactivity on Flagship Site
Flavor 5

• Quietly launched profiles on Bakersfield.com 4
  weeks ago.
• With no promotion
• 4,930 user profiles (3.5 of total user base!)
• Average 100 profile edits per day
• Profile users skew slightly younger
• When we promote, look out!

Profile editing
Story views
22
Next Bakersfield.com Blogs

• Every user profile will receive an optional blog
• Users can upload photos, music, documents.
• Every blog has an RSS feed and is a Podcast in
  disguise!

23
More flavors brands
Tehachapinews.com More interactive Web site for
existing community weekly
Bakersfield.comUser registration system,
profiles blogs

• First licensee in June!

?
24
In the product pipeline

• Instabranding tool 100 self-serve site
  creation.
• Local business directory that ties into social
  network
• Unique self-serve advertising that will tie
  directly into registration data, social
  networking, interests, tags
• Commenting system thats portable to any Web
  site
• Print export and automatic Quark file creation.
  Click a button, review Quark file, make changes
  and publish.

25
Revenue

• Primary goal in years 1-2 was to build audiences.
  This year were focused on revenue.
• 5 of our revenue now comes from online. 
• Sponsorships on Bakotopia, online upsells on
  other brands.
• Current revenue models (bundles, banners) arent
  enough for the future, which is dictated by
  self-serve.
• Our next step self-serve advertising around
  interests, tags keywords from user-supplied
  content.
• Print still does well with niche publishing.
• Northwest Voice and Mas print revenue subsidizes
  Bakotopia and technology development.
• Cost savings Bakomatic saves money -- cheaper
  (and better) than any vendor we could use.

26
Why did we build our own?

• Launched Northwest Voice on a vendor (iUpload).
  Realized we needed an economical way to serve
  many disparate audiences, and observe activity
  across them all (total market reach).
• The needs of Bakotopia, our youth brand, were
  way out of the scope of citizen journalism.
  Examples free anonymous listings, bands music,
  user profiles, social networking.
• We didnt want something that was created to spec
  for the lowest-common-denominator newspaper
  customer.

27
Or to put it another way

• Content alone will fail. Content and
  distribution will fail. You have to have
  technology."
• Yahoos Terry Semel, May 11, 2006

28
Want to get in the game?

• Now is the time!
• We fundamentally believe newspapers need to drive
  their own innovation to respond to competitive
  threats, just like we have.
• Chart your own destiny, or have it dictated to
  you by others.
• Licensing and partnership pilots underway. Were
  exploring a wide variety of different models.
• We dont really want to be a vendor, but people
  keep asking us for help. And we want to help!
• Enterprise, partner, more are on the table.
• If you have ideas on how we can work together
• E-mail dpacheco_at_bakersfield.com