A lot’s been hyped regarding newspapers and their survival strategy in today’s digitized world. At one end traditional ‘paper’ format is facing serious descend in subscription numbers and on the other ‘free content’ is killing serious journalism over web.
People are wondering what would happen next. Is there any survival strategy or one killer idea that can save journalists from this ‘free content over web’ thing?
No, I haven’t found one yet! But, when I saw TOI coming up with this innovative feature of ‘2 minute TOI’ on its website, I thought there might be something good on its way. At a time when almost all the news channels have a website flashing “latest” and “breaking” news all over the site, this neat initiative is clearly a winner!
Every day we are bombarded with so much of news that it’s really difficult to track all major websites. I hardly use TOI’s website, but with this feature I’d definitely check out this website once a day (but I’m assured that rivals would definitely come up with something similar in no time). When I checked the page of website, I found it really impressive- neat interface, 12 stories covering general, entertainment, sports and business news categories and each story linking to a separate page.
One important aspect is that it catches a key term “2 minutes”- in today’s busy world all you can ask from your customers is hardly 2 minutes of their time. Bravo, TOI!
I liked the idea – what do readers think? Will this new “less is more” idea be a success for TOI?
[This Media Monday digest has been written by Rabi Gupta, a start up enthusiast and co-founder of iDubba (Intelligent Box).]
Author: Arun Prabhudesai
Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin or get in touch with him at admin-at-trak-dot-in or 91.9822575676.Related posts:
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Its surely a hit… TOI has hit the bullls eye… time crunch is the major issue with every one.. n 2 min for all the major headlines… sounds like WAO>>>>
Its a good idea. Actually I wanted to create a website where people can provide 1 minute summary of any news article, blog they read along with the link to the whole article. When different people submit info, then it becomes a nice repository for others to read, vote and share. Not sure I will be able to monetize it…so put it down for now. Anybody interested can run with it.
Well this is just a copy of NYTimes. If you want to see a much better implementation go to http://prototype.nytimes.com/gst/articleSkimmer/
Hi Sharma,
Yeah it kindda look similar. But one important point with TOI is their catchy headline “2 minutes”. The term “Skimmer” which NYTimes uses is catchy too but one may immediately associate it with casualness or something for not so elite readers.
“2 minutes” term shows that they value your time and its gives a connotation just opposite of “Skimmer”.