社交媒体能让《华盛顿邮报》返老还童吗？

    报纸的衰落与社交媒体的崛起同时发生，这或许只是个巧合。但也许不是。

    这两个行业当然有很大的不同：一个聚焦于改变这个世界的公共事件；另一个则主要关心发生在镜头背后的个人经历。但在表象之下，社交媒体和报纸有许多相同之处。

    两者的生或死都取决于能否为读者提供及时、耐看和相关的内容。两者都靠卖广告、而不是订阅获取收入。在一个消遣方式不断增加的数字宇宙中，两者都在奋力争夺读者的注意力。

    那么，为什么Facebook公司在2012年首次公开募股时获得了高达1,040亿美元的估值，而刚刚被甩卖的《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)的价值还不到这个数额的四百分之一？最初籍籍无名的Twitter为什么在过去7年获得了2亿用户，而《华盛顿邮报》的发行量则呈现自由落体之势？

    我与许多旧媒体客户合作过，在最前沿目睹了新兴社交媒体的崛起和传统新闻媒体的衰落。在我看来，旧媒体显然需要向社交媒体学习许多东西，尤其是在五个关键领域：相关性、分销、速度、货币化和用户体验等方面。

    亚马逊(Amazon)创始人、数字世界的“老江湖”杰夫•贝佐斯接掌步履维艰的《华盛顿邮报》之后，他或许会考虑这些经验教训。

1）相关性——以人为本：

    报纸目前面临的最大批评或许是，它们已经与自己的读者完全脱节。撰文评述《华盛顿邮报》的衰落时，《纽约时报》( New York Times )媒体专栏作家大卫•卡尔曾经指出：“忆往昔，人们迫不及待地打开当天报纸寻找他们应该关心的事情，但这样的日子早已成为过去。”一些大报的表现尤其令人震惊：它们似乎根本无法向服务的对象提供及时且相关的新闻。于是，读者就自然而然地转移到了其他地方，即数不胜数、可以更好地迎合自己兴趣的在线资源。

    尽管社交媒体存在这样那样的局限性，但它很少提供无关紧要的新闻。比如，经算法设计，显示于用户Facebook主页的实时内容更新几乎是不可抗拒的。内容是根据用户的兴趣定制的，同时还精心考虑了人们过去的交往历史和朋友网络，以及哪些更新像病毒般扩散，哪些更新石沉大海等因素。问题的关键是，不同于大一统的印刷内容（这种方式向所有订户提供几乎不变的讯息），社交媒体提供的是个性化和敏捷的新闻。为报纸引入这些创新无疑是一个巨大的挑战，但让我们感到幸运的是，贝佐斯长期以来一直在亚马逊打造极具个性化的用户体验。

    It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not.

    The two industries are very different, of course: One focuses its lens on the public events that change our world; the other is concerned largely with the personal stuff that happens behind the scenes. But under the hood, social media and newspapers have more than a little in common.

    Both live or die on delivering timely, engaging, and relevant content to readers. Both monetize primarily by selling ads, not subscriptions. Both compete for readers' attention in a digital universe with an ever-expanding number of distractions.

    So why is it that Facebook (FB) was valued at $104 billion in its 2012 IPO, while the Washington Post (WPO) was just offloaded in a fire sale for less than 1/400th of that amount? Why has Twitter grown from obscurity to 200 million users in the last seven years, while the Post has seen its paid circulation free fall?

    Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience.

    As Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, no stranger to the digital arena, assumes the helm of the embattled Post, he might consider a few of these lessons:

1) Relevance -- Put people first:

    Perhaps the greatest criticism of newspapers today is that they have lost relevance to their own readers. Writing on the decline of the Post, New York Times media columnist David Carr points out that "[the] days when people snapped open the daily paper to find out the things they should care about were long past ..." Big newspapers, in particular, have proven startlingly inept at delivering timely, relevant news to the people they serve. So, naturally, readers have gone elsewhere, to myriad online sources that better cater to their interests.

    Social media, for all of its limitations, is rarely irrelevant. The stream of updates on your Facebook page, for instance, is algorithmically engineered to be darn-near irresistible. Content is customized and interest-based, factoring in an elaborate history of your past interactions and network of friends, as well as of which updates have gone viral and which have flopped. The point is that instead of a monolithic brick of printed content -- delivered more or less unchanged to all subscribers -- social media offers news that is personalized and nimble. Bringing these innovations to newspapers will no doubt be a challenge, but lucky for us Bezos has a long history at Amazon of personalizing and customizing user experiences.