社交媒体能让《华盛顿邮报》返老还童吗？

4）货币化——让广告更好：

    在Facebook发展早期，由于拒绝赚钱，一门心思地专注于用户数量的增长，马克•扎克伯格获得了不少恶评。但当兑现的那一刻来临时，他转向了一个久经考验的获利方式：广告。现在，广告占据Facebook公司88%的收入，仅上季度的广告收入就高达16亿美元。

    具有讽刺意味的是，向广告商出售用户的眼球正是报纸一直都在做的事情。媒体的经营模式始终非常简单：向读者免费（或接近免费）提供引人入胜的内容，然后把广告置于文章旁边，向相关公司收费。你提供的内容越好，就将获得更多用户。你获得的用户越多，你就将赚取越多的广告收入。没错，这不是研究火箭，就这么简单。

    但Facebook和其他社交网络已经采取了这种简单的方式，而且还把它提升到了一个新层次。出现在用户Facebook主页侧栏的那些广告都是根据用户每天主动向这家网站提交的个人信息定向发送的，具有极其精确的针对性。与此同时，一种新型的原生广告，即“付费评论”和“推广消息”（它们看起来非常像是朋友发布的普通留言），正在越来越多地涌入新闻流之中。虽然原生广告看起来像是在玩弄伎俩，但事实证明，这类广告的有效性是传统横幅广告的15倍。

    我的观点是，于报纸而言，发挥自己的实力，加大广告力度或许是更好的生存之道。不是聚焦于收费墙和其他疏远用户的付费模式，报纸应该向读者投放更具针对性的广告，同时尝试新模式，比如原生广告和前置式贴片广告。广告收入减少并不是一个容易解决的问题——在过去十年的大部分时间里，业界精英一直在苦苦思索这个问题。但我猜测，贝佐斯或许藏有一两个锦囊妙计。

5）用户体验——拥抱数字化，不要抗拒：

    易用性一直是社交媒体革命的基石。Facebook不胫而走的部分原因是，无论是小孩子还是老奶奶，任何人都能够几乎不费任何周折地登录这家社交网站，开设一个账户，然后开始与朋友建立联系。从缓缓渗入的新闻推送，到无休无止的共享照片、YouTube视频，再到各种游戏，这家网站的一切设计都是为了让用户流连忘返。有力证据是：美国人现在每个月平均在Facebook上花费6.75个小时。

    相比之下，很多报纸官网看起来非常像是发布于网络的报纸印刷版（《华盛顿邮报》碰巧就是其中最差劲的一员）。用技术行话来说，这就是所谓的“拟物化设计”——在没有明确原因的情况下，新技术模仿旧的设计概念。它的结果是，许多新闻网站的界面笨重而杂乱，似乎是在匆匆忙忙地把一切东西置于网页的“醒目位置”。在线呈现，已经开辟了无数展示信息和吸引读者的新方式，但迄今为止，传统的新闻网站在接纳这些变化方面一直表现得非常迟缓，这一点的确令人尴尬。甚至它们的iPad应用有时候看起来似乎跟“迷你”报纸没什么差别。

    但也有例外。《纽约时报》就是一个正在向正确方向迈进的新闻网站。过去一年中，这家网站发布的交互式图形使得读者可以探索飓风桑迪(Hurricane Sandy)的破坏路径，浏览与叙利亚冲突相关、带有注解的YouTube片段，推测美国总统大选的可能结果。所有这些项目都需要大量的后台工作，但它们充分表现出一家新闻网站能够提供的附加值，代表着一种可以吸引读者，并且让他们参与进来的新闻种类。

    此外，新闻网站也可以从Tumblr、Flipboard和Feedly这类应用和服务中汲取一些设计灵感。所有这些努力将以视觉格式呈现极具吸引力的故事，被组织成流畅信息流的文章也将让读者产生浏览和探索的冲动。在已经非常有效地采用这种模式的新闻网站中，做得最好的是科技博客Gizmodo。

4) Monetization -- Make ads better:

    Early in Facebook's trajectory, Mark Zuckerberg was notorious for his refusal to monetize and his head-down focus on user growth. But when the moment did come to cash in, he turned to a time-honored approach: advertising. Ads now account for 88% of Facebook's revenue, or $1.6 billion last quarter alone.

    The irony here is that selling users' eyeballs to advertisers is something that newspapers have done forever. The formula has always been fairly simple: Give readers engaging content for nothing (or next to nothing); then charge companies to put their ads next to articles. The better the content you offer, the more users you'll get. The more users you get, the more ad revenue you make. It's not rocket science.

    But Facebook and other social networks have taken this simple approach and elevated it to a new level. Those ads on the sidebar of your Facebook page are precision-targeted, based on the wealth of demographic information you volunteer to the site everyday. Meanwhile, a new breed of native ads -- those "Sponsored Posts" and "Promoted Tweets" that look a lot like ordinary updates from friends - are popping up in news streams more and more. While they may seem gimmicky, native ads have shown to be up to 15 times as effective as traditional banner advertising.

    My point is that newspapers might be well served by playing to their strength and doubling down on advertising. Rather than fixating on paywalls and pay-to-play models that alienate users, they should work to better target ads to readers and experiment with new models, from native ads to pre-rolls. The problem of dwindling ad revenue is not an easy one -- It has kept some of the best business minds busy for much of the last decade. But here's guessing that Bezos might have a new trick or two up his sleeve.

5) User experience -- Embrace digital, don't fight it:

    Usability has been a cornerstone of the social media revolution. Facebook spread like wildfire partly because anyone -- from tween to grandmother -- can log in, open an account, and start connecting with friends, all with a minimum of fuss. Everything about the site is engineered to get people to stick around, from the percolating newsfeed to the endless shared photos and YouTube videos to the games. Proof: The average American now spends 6.75 hours every month on the site.

    By contrast, lots of newspaper sites look an awful lot like printed papers posted online. (TheWashington Post happens to be among the worst offenders.) In tech speak this is known as skeuomorphism, when new technology apes old design concepts for no clear reason. The result on many news sites is an interface that's clunky and cluttered, busily trying to cram everything "above the fold." Online presentation has opened up countless new ways to showcase information and engage readers, but traditional news sites have thus far been embarrassingly slow to embrace these changes. Even their iPad apps sometimes seem little more than "mini" papers.

    There are exceptions, however. One news site taking steps in the right direction is the New York Times. Over the last year, interactive graphics have allowed readers to explore the path of Hurricane Sandy's destruction, browse through annotated YouTube footage of the conflict in Syria and map out possible outcomes of the U.S. presidential election. All of these projects required lots of back-end work, but they show the added value that a news site can offer and represent the kind of content that will draw readers in and keep them engaged.

    News sites might also do well to take a few design cues from apps and services like Tumblr, Flipboard, and Feedly. All of these present stories in highly engaging, visual formats, with articles organized into fluidly scrolling streams that invite browsing and exploration. Among the news sites that have embraced this formula most effectively is gadget site Gizmodo..