SA media must take heed of online innovation

If you take many of South Africa’s leading online news publishers and investigate their online offering, what’s the result? Archaic. While some traditional media companies, such as the Mail & Guardian, pay more attention to the technologies and online hype that surrounds their stories, other traditional publishers appear to be happy with just pushing content and almost ignoring what many call the “user experience loop”.

While adding an “email to a friend” option is indeed a welcome step forward, it’s a far cry from staying on par with how the Internet has and continues to evolve.

Recently USA Today in the States introduced a redesigned website. While the site’s actual design leaves a lot to be commented on, the new website does make use of many community and social tools, and allows users to add comments, recommend articles, and even create their own blogs! While some of the new features aren’t extraordinary, it is a positive step to seeing more big newspapers adopting social aspects on their sites. This is something we in South Africa should take note of.

Human nature

While the redesign may not initially have been positively received from all of its users, as was displayed in users’ comments on the site, this is normal. Engaging with their current users may have helped in this regard, many website redesigns almost always receive an initial “negative” outcry from their current users. This is because people like the familiar and don’t like change. It’s human nature. And when it comes to traditional media, nothing could be as true. USA Today’s users will however come to like the new features over in time.

Globally, USA Today is joining many traditional media players in embracing their users and the Web. From Reuters wanting to build a social network and BBC turning to YouTube, I’m predicting some exciting times ahead. And it’s about time!

Locally, we need to start optimising our own media websites with Web 2.0 tools and technologies. While I understand that most of our sites are probably built using pre Web 2.0 publishing systems and that resources aren’t as abundant, I do believe they’re equally solvable. As more and more people get accustomed to Web 2.0 utilities and technologies, so too will news sites see the priority to change over their systems and upgrade their resources.

To give an idea of what is possible, the following could be seen as a starting point:

• Provide a platform for readers and reporters to create profile pages and blogs (heck, what makes 5FM any different?)
  
• Make it easy for readers with outside blogs to incorporate and discuss stories on their blogs
  
• Allow readers to upload their own stories and opinions, and then cross-reference each
  
• Incorporate buttons on news articles to allow readers to share and discuss them on social networking sites
  
• Encourage open dialogue with readers by allowing readers to comment on stories
  
• Optimise RSS feeds so that users can comment and share news items
  
• Develop an onsite digg-like system that allows users to rate news items for other users

These ideas aren’t limited to news sites either. Any website which has a loyal following (or is looking for one) can adopt them.

Traditional media companies, however, must start evolving their systems to allow their users to engage with the content and their fellow community members. Corporate South Africa is already starting to see the benefits of this. Why? Because discussion around topics of importance to any organisation is healthy for business.