Yesterday, the Google News team announced the beta launch of Living Stories, a platform that aims to provide a new way for users to consume news.  The prototype blends Google technology with content from the Washington Post and New York Times.

According to Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager at Google News, “The idea behind Living Stories is to experiment with a different format for presenting news coverage online.”

Being a Redskins fan (nowadays a euphemism for “a bitter, jaded NFL fan”) I fiddled around with the Living Stories page focused on the Redskins.  Here are the key components of Living Stories from what I can tell:

1. Content is aggregated onto one page – Much like a blog, Living Stories aggregates related stories onto one page.  Articles throughout the page can be expanded and shrunk on the page.
2. Enhanced navigational elements – Living Stories seems to have some interesting navigational elements that are aimed at making it easier to interact with a news story.  You can browse chronologically, by sub-topic (I think they are using some clustering algorithm to distill sub-topics), and by content type.
3. Personalization – Living Stories will tell you whether or not there are updates since your last visit and will make some changes to the presentation of stories based on your usage.

So after spending some time playing around with Living Stories, here are some initial observations I have:

1. It’s innovative - Google, The Post and The Times are trying something new and experimental and I commend them for that.  I think in some ways, newspapers have been moving in this direction for a while however this seems to be a bit of a leap forward.

2. I like the aesthetic – I like the fact that the aesthetic is pretty spartan, a clear departure from the aesthetic on display on many newspaper Web sites today.  In typical Google fashion, the focus is on content and providing a clean UX.

3. I like the timeline UI - The timeline presents a pretty simple way of viewing a story chronologically that is interactive and allows you to to easily navigate to the story you are interested in.  Furthermore, there is a persistent navigational elements that contains the prominent stories, chronologically organized, which I found to be a useful navigational tool.

4. I’m not crazy about the scrolling - I prefer a multipage/hyperlinked approach.  I’m not crazy about extensive scrolling and the expanders on the Living Stories page cause you to scroll quite a bit to navigate through the content.

5. Provided the newspapers host the page, I think it will help drive search traffic -  I am assuming that the reason this is hosted on the Google domain is because it is still in beta and the ultimate plan is to transition the domain onto the newspaper Web sites.  If that assumption is true then I do believe that this will help newspaper sites rank better in organic search for high-volume topics.  For example, the Post currently ranks 10 in Google organic for “Washington Redskins.”  If this helps them get above the fold then it will help increase their overall traffic significantly.

6. It seems like this could harm ad revenue - Aggregating all stories onto one page seems like it would cut back on available ad inventory.  Initially, newspapers would map one page to one story and as they became more sophisticated about optimizing inventory, they started mapping one story to multiple pages.  This is almost the opposite approach, which seems like it would significantly reduce ad inventory.

7. I can see how this might help the bottom line – I’m guessing this is all arranged algorithmically so if it is equal or better from the reader’s standpoint that would mean newspapers wouldn’t have to pay editors to arrange all this content, which would reduce operational costs somewhat.  That being said, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.

8. Living Stories could be more social - It seems like there was almost a deliberate effort to eliminate social features like sharing.  It does seem like there is a ‘comments’ section but it is buried far below the stories.  I find this curious.  I also find it interesting there isn’t any user-driven arrangement of content on the site.  My recommendation would be to think about how these stories can be socialized a bit more.

If I were to verbalize the problems that Living Stories (in it’s current form) solves, I would list them as follows:

• Newspapers don’t do a good job leveraging original content to tap into organic search traffic.
• Newspaper users are not satisfied with the information architecture of content on newspaper sites.

I think Living Stories will answer #1 for sure and possibly #2 for a segment of more sophisticated news consumers.

That being said I think there are other issues that Living Stories doesn’t solve, including:

• How do we address the blurring lines between media production and consumption.

That being said, I know this is still in Labs so I’m sure Cohen and his team are going to be iterating rapidly over the next year.  I’m excited to see how this things evolves.

Several weeks ago, Mihaela Lica from Everything PR presented a critical perspective on a news release we had issued in which she raised some good questions about the goals and target on a news release.  Her posting prompted me to give her a call and there were two outcomes from that discussion.  First, the discussion influenced some of my thoughts in the article I recently drafted for Visibility Magazine.  Second, she followed-up her initial post with feedback from some industry professionals in an article called, The SEO Value of a Press Release.

We work with a lot of Internet marketers who focus on a lot of different goals.  Over the years I have heard a lot of different reasons why Internet marketers use news release distribution.

I have put together an article (for Visibility Magazine) that contains my perspective on the real search value of news releases.

I get frequently asked about good social media resources so wanted to take a moment and post what I think are some of the top resources out there:

Books

1. Putting the Public back in Public Relations, Brian Solis & Deirdre Breakenridge (March 1, 2009)
2. The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David M. Scott (November 3, 2008)
3. The New Influencers, Paul Gillin (May 1, 2009)
4. Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, Amy Shuen (August 7, 2008)

Blog

1. PR 2.0, Brian Solis
3. Scobleizer, Robert Scoble

I know there are loads more but this is just a list of resources I can verify are helpful.  If you have suggestions or think something adds to this list feel free to let me know.

Dear Yahoo!,

I am a big fan…

I think Yahoo! News is a fantastics news portal and am still a loyal Yahoo! Mail user.

But you have to stop pushing the Yahoo! Mail integration with Windows Messenger every time I log-in to Yahoo! Mail.   I don’t mind it appearing the first time but every single time is just a bad user experience.

Of the panels I sat through at the recent Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in San Jose, the most relevant to the space in which I work was the panel on News Search.  Although the panel is a consistent presence at the SES events, this particular panel had a Google representative, Maile Ohye, talk about how Google News indexes, groups and ranks news content.

When it comes to ranking, some of the more important variables include:

• Recency - Fresher stories are going to be ranked higher.
• Originality - No brainer.
• Locality – I was unclear how this would impact relevancy unless GN was considering the IP of the searcher when displaying results.
• Quality of source - I’ve written about how Google News considers quality of source in the past.  Their 2003 patent application (which was recently approved) explains in depth the variables that make up “quality of source” in Google’s eyes.
• Aggregate editorial interest - This is of particular interest.  I equate this somewhat to content clustering.  Basically, when Google News is analyzing a news story, it is going to run some content analysis script on the article.  GN is then going to compare the content in the article to the aggregate index.  If the article’s content shares an affinity with prominent content appearing in the aggregate then it will be ranked higher.

I don’t recall Ohye specifically mentioning this but I find it hard to believe that they don’t look carefully at click-through rates of stories as well. Ohye finished up by running through some basic best practices for news search, which the TopRank blog does a good job explaining.

I recently did an e-mail based Q&A with Social Media Portal, which focused primarily on my experiences working in product management to drive PRWeb.  Here is an excerpt:

Social Media Portal (SMP): What is your full job title and role at PRWeb.com?

Jiyan Wei (JW): I’m the Director of Product Management – I drive product platform strategy and roadmap execution for PRWeb and support strategic business planning, partnerships, marketing and sales. It is sort of like being the Sous Chef at a restaurant. You work closely with your developers (cooks in the kitchen) to create a product and then support the waiters and waitresses (marketing & sales) who go out and sell the product. Ultimately you report to the head chef (a CMO or CTO) and the owners of the restaurant (executive team, investors).

SMP: Briefly, tell us about PRWeb.com and its target audience

JW: PRWeb.com takes an old tool in the PR toolkit – the press release – and turns it upside down.  Old PR is trying to hit journalists and media hoping they will write a story about you; PRWeb is about helping our clients get their message directly to the audience through the Internet.

Because we primarily leverage Internet channels (instead of closed, proprietary networks) we are able to deliver a product at a significantly lower cost than many other “traditional” newswires.  This means our audience ranges from technically innovative global companies all the way down to your Main Street mom-and-pop shops, like plumbers, wedding-planners and retail stores.

SMP: What was the most challenging part of building the service (and after the acquisition)?

JW: Vocus (PRWeb’s parent company, NASDAQ: VOCS) a leading provider of on-demand software for public relations management, and tends to have some very polished clients  but the majority of PRWeb customers actually are small business owners and marketers.  These segments all have different requirements and determine ROI in different ways.  Developing a depth of understanding for these new segments and then building a product that would satisfy everyone was and continues to be one of the most challenging – and exciting – parts of building the service.

Read the full interview

The concept of online distribution is a broad categorization that encompasses a variety of different models for getting information from one place to another.  Deconstructing the concept of online distribution is vital to picking an online distribution service that makes sense so here is a general overview of the different models of online distribution:

Direct Distribution

Direct distribution means that a news release is pushed directly to an individual or group of individuals with little or no intermediary.  E-mail is the most common form of direct distribution because the content is moving directly from sender to recipient.  Fax, postal mail delivery and RSS delivery to a recipient’s RSS reader would also qualify as forms of of direct distribution.

Direct Distribution

When it comes to news releases, direct distribution facilitated by a wire system was the original method for distribution and still profoundly impacts the way that traditional wire services (PRNewswire, Business Wire) think about distribution.  It is also a component of the PRWeb approach to distribution, evidenced by our 30K media subscribers who receive e-mails and 250K subscribers who receive our content via RSS.

Indexing

Indexing refers to the practice of making news content available to searchers through various indexes and databases.  Unlike direct distribution, which can be classified as a push method, indexing is classified as a pull method because it involves getting the content placed so it can be found and retrieved by the end user. distribution/consumption process.

Indexing

It is funny to think about indexing as distribution but it is a primary driver of the recalibration of the overall news cycle because of the rapid adoption of search engines.  Today, over 150 million Americans use search engines every day and a significant percentage of this population are looking for news.  Getting news releases placed into this flow of online eyeballs is what differentiated PRWeb from other news distribution services and although most have begun looking at search as a key component, traditional wire services are still figuring out how to integrate search into their distribution strategies.

Syndication

Traditionally, syndication refers to the process in which an article (or sometimes a cartoon) is published in a number of magazines or newspapers at the same time.  When it comes to news releases, syndication means that your news release will be published on additional Web sites when it goes live, in addition to the news release site itself.

Syndication

Syndication is one of the ways that PRWeb is differentiated from free online distribution services because free services rarely any syndication of note (while PRWeb releases are syndicated on leading News sites).  By leveraging RSS and providing tools that make it easy for publishers to syndicate our content we have managed to build the industry’s leading syndication network with over 30K Web sites in total.

Hopefully, this has provided a general framework for how online news distribution works and when you are selecting a news distribution provider you should consider these various methods.

I was recently browsing through Twitter when I stumbled upon a posting that took me aback – someone had posted an RFP to build a mirror of PRWeb for a budget of $300.

It was comical in a sense but also interesting in that it served a hyperbolic function: it symbolized the process through which free press release services come to market.

Essentially, the process goes something like this:

1. Someone decides they want to create a press release distribution service;
2. They build a content management system that allows users to construct a document;
3. They get the domain indexed in Google News;
4. They start marketing themselves as a “free press release service”

Over the years, there have been countless free press release services spring up and some of them have evolved into pay models.  Some have even developed customer bases and brand equity.

I want spend a few minutes outlining what prospective customers should understand about these services and in order to do so I will first provide a framework for thinking about what it is a press release distribution service actually provides:

• Construction - All services provide a means through which a press release is transferred into a form that can be easily hosted and transferred via the Web.  This can take several forms.  Wire services will often allow a user to transmit a word document that will then be reviewed and uploaded via a back-end CMS.  Many of the newer services provide the user with direct access to a CMS where they can construct a release themselves.
• Distribution - Once the release has been constructed into a structured format it will then be distributed through a variety of channels.  What ‘distribution’ actually means is probably a separate post all together but for now we’ll just acknowledge that it has to go somewhere – to journalists, search engines, syndicate sites, etc.
• Analysis - Once the release has been distributed through the Web, the end user should have some sort of system that provides them with a sense of how much traction the release received.  Again, ‘traction’ is an entirely separate discussion that we will for the time being reserve for a later discussion.

So essentially, all press release distribution services come down to these three components.  Staying within this framework, the question then becomes, what is the difference between a free service and a pay service?

The answer brings us back to the example that sparked this post: anyone can theoretically build a CMS that allows someone to create a Web document.  A slightly more difficult task involves providing a user with some sort of analytics on traction of that document.  What differentiates free services from entrenched services is in the distribution of that document.  The development of a broad distribution network takes significant time and resources.

So the question that a customer should ask when choosing a service is “Where does my press release go?”  With the majority of free services, the release doesn’t go very far and that is because the distribution networks associated with these services are not very significant.  Now if the story has viral potential placement on a Web site and getting indexed in Google News may be sufficient for it to gain significant traction online however the truth of the matter is that the majority of news releases are not breaking Watergate and need to be distributed to the right audiences and that is where services like PRWeb come into play.

On the most recent episode of Webmaster Radio’s Cover Story, I spend some time chatting with Lee Odden from TopRank Internet Marketing on SEO, social media and the convergence of PR and Marketing.