FREEDyourMind

Looking Back, Looking Forward

It's a nice day to be releasing the news that we saw 32% revenue growth in 2009 because our whole staff from around the country (actually, around the continent) is in Ann Arbor today for an all-hands meeting. I'm incredibly proud of the hard work of everyone on my team--I'm proud of them and I'm proud of the work they have done for the more than 800 websites we work with today. We're a company that pratices what we preach--customer satisfaction. We live and breathe it.

Read more about it here.

We've built something really amazing here, and I'm confident that 2010 will be even better. We have new products and services being rolled out, we're going to host an amazing user group in Ann Arbor in May, and who knows, maybe a few other surprises.

Thanks to everyone for a great 2009, and here's to 2010!

How Far We've Come

Check out this newscast from 1981 about the future of online news. It starts:

“Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to see the day’s newspaper. Well, it’s not as far-fetched as it may seem.”

Someone from the San Francisco Examiner is quoted as saying:

“This is an experiment. We’re trying to figure out what it’s going to mean to us, as editors and reporters and what it means to the home user. And we’re not in it to make money, we’re probably not going to lose a lot but we aren’t going to make much either.”

28 years later, and people now get more news from the internet than from newspapers.

Honestly, I'm a little surprised it took 28 years.

Where Do You Get Your News From?

Back in December I wrote about the changes going on with the Detroit Newspapers.  Well earlier today I saw a interesting stat from The Pew Research Center about that in 2008, for the first time ever, more Americans relied on the Internet for national and international news then they relied on newspapers.  When looking at the 18-29 year old group, the Internet equaled Television as a main source for national and international news.

It is no surprise that advertisers are following the same trends, shifting more of their focus to the web.

The Future of the Newspaper

Everyone has probably heard by now what's going on with my hometown newspapers. The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press have decided to limit home delivery to three days a week in an attempt to cut costs and save jobs. On other days, people can buy an abbreviated edition on newsstands or get an online subscription for $12/month.

This is huge, and I'll be interested to see if this starts a ripple effect. Will other papers wait to see what happens with the Detroit experiment or will they hop on the bandwagon, eager for any solution that can cut costs in the short term. Detroit is in a different situation than many home town newspapers though because of the auto industry. People all over the world read the Detroit dailies for auto news, almost like an automotive trade journal. So they may be able to cut home delivery with less impact than, say, the Des Moines paper or the Little Rock paper.

In the meantime, since my business is the online world, I'll be interested to see if people actually pay to read the whole edition online and how this all shakes out for them.

We're measuring online customer satisfaction for a lot of media companies, including newspapers and broadcast outlets who are seeing more and more traffic go to their websites. It's essential for these companies to know how to maximize the value of their online channel in tough economic times. We see over and over in the ACSI report on online news that there is little differentiation between online news outlets, or at least between the ones the University measures for the ACSI. There's such a huge opportunity for someone to step up and own this market.

How do you feel about this as a consumer? Are you nervous about the possible disappearance or reduction of print newspapers?