Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

New version of MovableType is big on social media

Aug 15, 2008 15 Comments »

It’s time for blogging to move on to the next level (I haven’t been doing much blogging so moving on to the next level seems like an over-statement). Blogging is evolving to be more than a personal publishing experience and exchanging views through the comments sections. It is more of a social media affair, if you go by the features being offered by the latest version of MovableType. Aside from the regular blogging and CMS features, the latest version also gives you social networking tools like creating online profiles, online forums and profile exchanges. Check out their blog.

To be frank these features are not for everybody. Why would you create a social networking website if you simply want to publish your thoughts to be shared by a regular audience? I think extra features do nothing but distract – if you want to blog, simply blog.

Feature-rich blogging platforms will be good for corporate blogs though because they can help them develop and sustain a community.

TimesOnline is making 200 years of its content available online

May 09, 2008 No Comments »

Via the beta version of TimesOnline, according to this link at Journalism.com, you can go through the archives of the content produced by The Times, Sunday Times and TimesOnline published since 1785. The archive will be free to its users, initially, and then perhaps they will be charging a fee for the access. Recently the Wall Street Journal made its online content free and I think other online publications will soon be following suit. Anyway, it’ll be quite fascinating to go through the old archives.

Do content companies owe it to their users

Apr 11, 2008 2 Comments »

Flickr recently introduced video and many of its die-hard users are protesting the move. I was just wondering, when your entire existence depends on the content generated by your users, can you take arbitrary decisions? Shouldn’t they have asked the users before introducing a feature that only a few of their users would appreciate? I mean, there are already so many websites allowing their users to post videos, so why introduce it to a photography website? Compared to videos on YouTube, the quality of photographs on Flickr is really great. The trend is I think wrong and it doesn’t bode good for people who intend to use "free" websites to post their creations, whether it’s photography, video or text.

Creatively selling content on the Internet: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

Mar 06, 2008 2 Comments »

It is becoming increasingly difficult to sell content, especially non-tangible content like text, video and audio over the Internet because so much variety is available for free. Free content is irresistible to most surfers even if they have to compromise on quality a bit.

But giving your content for free doesn’t mean earning no money. Recently a rock group called Radiohead offered its music at whatever price its fans wanted to pay and became a huge success. Their album "In Rainbows" made record sales (in terms of artists themselves selling and promoting their music on the Internet) and now even in the conventional format (CDs is being sold in the retail stores) they are making brisk sales. This album was not as big a success as their previous album but compared to the current music sales trends in the market it was a decent business.

The Radiohead had an advantage compared to a lesser-known artist trying to sell his or her creation over the Internet: they are a know British rock band. Nonetheless there are many artists as well as music companies that are not doing well following the conventional music business model.

In another such fete Nine Inch Nails is offering free music over the Internet accompanied with varied formats of prices. For instance, you can download the first nine tracks for free and for $5 you can download all 36 tracks. And this doesn’t mean they’re not making sales in the conventional sense. At various other prizes one can buy CDs, DVDs, and a $300 "ultra-delux limited edition pack" can get you an assortment of the band’s paraphernalia, with the music of course.

I think this is a very creative strategy to sell content on the Internet. The Internet audience is used to getting stuff for free and then paying for it later on, if it finds it worth paying for. Besides, instead of people not listen to your tracks or pirating them, it is a lot better to offer the music for free so that you can lay ground for further/future sales. By doing this you are not forcing your fans to engage in illegal activities in order to listen to your music.

The traditional content companies should follow the same flexible model over the Internet. A great thing about digital content is, once it is created, there are practically no production costs and you can create as many versions as possible. Even if you create one music file it can be downloaded by millions of fans, whether they pay or not.

Internet Explorer 8 has been launched

Mar 05, 2008 No Comments »

If you are interested you can download and install the Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. A few days ago I had read that the latest version of Internet Explorer will be standards compliant and the blogger who mentioned that was quite skeptically surprised. Does this mean designers who want to create CSS-based layouts will not be facing roadblocks in Internet Explorer 8?

Although I don’t design websites for a living — not any more — I have spent many nights trying to make my layouts look the same in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

A major feature being talked about is the integration of FaceBook in Internet Explorer. I have just started using FaceBook so I don’t have much idea how beneficial this feature is going to be. But one thing is of sure: social networking websites are fast becoming the part and parcel of the mainstream software applications. You will soon have a FaceBook icon in your operating system in a year or so.

Anyway, I installed Internet Explorer 7 many months ago but I’m so used to using Firefox by now that I rarely used it; I use it for websites that only open in Internet Explorer.