In an attempt to jump-start its new site, AOL's Netscape is offering to pay the top users of Digg and other collaborative news sites $1,000 a month to migrate to Netscape.com. Netscape General Manager Jason Calacanis put out the call for paid users on his blog earlier this week. "I have an offer to the top 50 users on any of the major social news/bookmarking sites," he wrote. "We will pay you $1,000 a month for your 'social bookmarking' rights. Put in at least 150 stories a month and we'll give you $12,000 a year." The move to lure users from other sites comes three weeks into Netscape.com's transformation from a professionally programmed portal to a social news site that features news articles and blog posts that have been submitted by users. The initial period has been rocky for Netscape; since the new site launched June 29, some users of the old Netscape.com portal have posted comments criticizing the new site and petitioning AOL to restore the former page. Given the public complaints about the new site, the move to recruit users is viewed by some as a sign that AOL is losing patience with the initiative. "It screams desperation for Netscape after a very short time," said Steve Rubel, a marketing strategist and senior vice president with Edelman. AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said that the company doesn't think the protesters' complaints reflect a widespread user backlash. "The percentage of people who have concerns about it, measured against an overall audience of more than 9 million, is very small." (Netscape.com last month drew approximately 9.7 million visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.)
Bloggers tend to be Internet newshounds who read online news accounts, join listservs, and scour other blogs at rates that far surpass their non-blogging counterparts, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "Bloggers are avid consumers of online media," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew and one of the report's authors. "They are consuming online media in a way that even other online users do not," she added. For instance, almost all bloggers--95 percent--reported reading news online, compared to 73 percent of Internet users at large. The majority of bloggers--55 percent--said they read e-mail newsletters or listservs, compared to 29 percent of all Web users; and 47 percent of bloggers reported reading other blogs for news, compared to 9 percent of all online users. When it comes to traditional media, however, bloggers don't show markedly different consumption patterns than non-bloggers. Approximately 90 percent of both groups watch TV news, while 85 percent of both groups read newspapers and 75 percent listen to radio news. For the report, researchers also asked bloggers why they blogged. The most popular motive, cited by 77 percent, was to express themselves creatively. Almost the same proportion--76 percent--said they blogged to document personal experiences, while 59 percent did so to stay in touch with friends and family. Only 15 percent said they blogged in hopes of making money. Overall, Pew found that 8 percent of Internet users--or approximately 12 million U.S. adults--keep a blog, and 39 percent of Web users (57 million U.S. adults) read them. Last year, Pew reported that 7 percent of U.S. adults kept blogs and 27 percent of online adults in the United States read them. Wednesday's report was based on surveys of 4,573 Internet users and 233 bloggers, conducted between July of last year and April 2006.
Fox Atomic, the youth-oriented division of Fox Filmed Entertainment, Wednesday unveiled a new broadband Web site that it hopes will serve as a magnet for its core audience of 17- to-24-year-olds. To keep young users coming back, foxatomic.com will offer interactive features, humorous video clips, and other content as well as promotions for the unit's upcoming movie releases. "What we're really doing is trying to create an entertainment destination for our audience," said John Hegeman, chief operating officer of Fox Atomic. By enticing teens and young adults with "fun things to do," the studio seeks to build a closer relationship with its users, which in turn will help create an eager audience for its films. Hegeman, who developed the groundbreaking Internet marketing campaign for "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999, recalled how the 25 million weekly visitors to the movie's site dwindled away over the course of a year. "That we built up to that level and it just went away is something that always bothered me," he said. Since then, marketing movies on the Internet has become a standard part of Hollywood promotional campaigns. Lately, big studios have capitalized on the popularity of social networking sites to reach young moviegoers. Walt Disney Co., for example, recently launched a campaign on YouTube.com for "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," marking the first time a national marketer has advertised on the video-sharing site. To tap into the appeal of social-networking sites, foxatomic.com partnered with Jumpcut.com to develop a feature called The Blender that will allow users to make and edit their own video shorts. The site will also carry material from Stupidvideos.com and clips from Fox TV shows. Hegeman said that he also expects the site will develop cross-promotional initiatives with other News Corp.-owned sites that draw young users such as MySpace.com and IGN. In addition to any cross-promotional content deals foxatomic.com strikes, the site will also be ad-supported. Foxatomic.com is looking to build an audience of 500,000 unique visitors over the summer, to grow ultimately to about 2 million, said Hegeman. Fox Atomic, formed late last year, will debut its first theatrical release "Turistas," a horror flick set in a remote Brazilian beach town, in December. That will be followed by in 2007 by a slate of films including a pair of horror sequels: "The Hills Have Eyes 2," and "28 Days Later."
People who volunteer to evangelize for particular products are more likely to do so when the products are easy to talk about and from established marketers than when they're so unusual that they defy easy explanation. That's one of the key findings of a new report by word-of-mouth marketing firm BzzAgent. For the report, the Keller Fay Group and BzzAgent surveyed 3,235 of BzzAgent's unpaid evangelists, who talk up products in person, online, and on the telephone. Almost half--45 percent--of the volunteers said they chose to promote products that were "easy to talk about," while 40 percent said they touted products from "a trusted name." Only 24 percent said their selected products were "innovative," 23 percent said they were "new and unique," and 21 percent said they were "smart." "The first myth the research rebuts is that word of mouth is only for 'the latest thing,'" the report stated. "Word-of-mouth success is about communicating solutions--providing answers that consumers want to pass along to others." The companies with the most word-of-mouth, according to BzzAgent, were established brands Toyota and Wal-Mart. Jon Barry, senior vice president at Keller Fay, said companies seeking word-of-mouth should focus on the basic features of their products, rather than hope to create buzz with flashy campaigns. "It's perceived that word-of-mouth is driven by stunts and gimmicks, what you can put up on YouTube or putting up an unusual or outlandish Web site, when the fact is that what consumers are really interested in is products, and what they do," he said.