The biggest challenge for Irish news/entertainment sites in 2012? One simple word - Twitter.
Ah no, seriously, it's ...Twitter, or more to the point , in what Twitter represents.
One could argue that we are now beyond Web 2.0 in terms of social media integration; it doesn't need to be integrated at all. Where print publishers have struggled with the 'free' web and experimented with varying degrees of underwhelming success in subscriptions , online publishers now face the same challenge: How to Remain Relevant.
Mobile is changing the game once again.
Vast amounts of investment goes into news and entertainment websites - to drive audience and then commercial revenues, but with an increasing percentage of web use now coming from mobile (5% of all European traffic in EU5 came from mobile in Oct 2011;comscore) and the use of Twitter as news source , instant update and 'being in the know' on the move, threatens all the work web publishers have invested in their brands and products.
The only saving grace for publishers, is that advertisers haven't moved to mobile yet( in any great amounts) and what Twitter have offered in terms of commercialisation is as underwhelming as the aforementioned print publishers attempts at paywall generation; not to mention how advertisers approach it - just look at McDonalds #mcdstories
But, its coming, the audience is migrating to mobile, be it video or text as Generation M (millennials etc) want instant gratification.
Twitter has the audience, as indeed many other content publishers do also on mobile.
Whoever gets to monetise first, and I'm not talking about ad networks, will take a serious advantage.
Mobile Operators will also want a piece (as they're not happy ripping everyone off with ridiculous data charges as it stands), as they have the most data on their customer base. They just don't know how to do it.
Come to think of it, does anybody?
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