The Netzticker by the Netzwoche is a daily newsletter about the latest events in the swiss web industry plus a few very important international news. It averages maybe eight headlines a day and is sent out at noon. I guess that a large percentage of people working in this industry here read it after lunch.
The problem is, that for web-centric publication, it - in my opinion - doesn't get the web in several important ways. The thing is, they email a form with checkboxes for each headline. Decide for each wether you want to read it, submit and wait for the mail with the real content. This doesn't work in some mail clients and some server configurations (for security reasons), so they recently added a link where you could do the same thing on a webpage - of course you have to enter your email address every time then. Annoying.
This interface lets me think about the relevance of a news item twice, because it comes in two mails. The first time with limited informations. Annoying.
And there is no searchable archive. Annoying.
There are no webpages of the articles. So I can't bookmark and can't link. Annoying.
At least, I can go back and find old headline-mails and request these messages, but the mail's subject will then claim, that they are today's headlines. Annoying.
Sometimes, their software is broken or just plain slow. Like today. There is an intriguing headline about increased open source usage in big swiss companies, but I can't get it. I will, eventually, but then I won't be able to link to it and tell you about it. Very annoying.
Usefulness would increase dramatically, if they would just send out a bunch of links to an online version (of course, these pages would then have links to all other today's headlines). The archive could be permanent and accessible to search engines. People could make bookmarks and links. More useful, more traffic.
Their argument to keep it this way is, that this system gives them information on how popular each headline is. Wrong. On the one hand, you can do the same thing with your access logs anyway. More importantly, access to archives will give them much more information on what is really interesting in the long run. Plus referer logs from search engines will provide additional insight. And their current statistics is skewed towards catchy headlines. They could just use any standard system and save costs.
Of course, if they'd really get a clue, they would - on top of all that - provide an RSS feed.
Update: The technical problems on the Netzticker site mentioned above appeared again today: I submitted the headlines and instead of a mail I just got a webpage with an error message. But this time, I was able to track down the problem: You see, one thing that this format actually does enable in a way the web or RSS don't is that with the same html-form that orders your news you can answer a poll of them; This should actually lead to much high voter turnout and much less duplication in their poll. Today, they ask how Cablecom's price reduction will affect the ADSL resellers. But, ironically, that feature is the root of the technical glitch - if you don't answer the poll, the headlines come in fine. Too bad for this feature.
Posted by seefeld at November 18, 2003 13:33You are of course right, the system is less than perfect. But look at it form a different angle: The Netzticker actually succeeds as a form of push medium on the Internet, and I find it interesting to think about why it does. I mean, everyone in the industry reads the Netzticker regardless of its crippled format (and the often uninteresting news items), right? Maybe it works because the executive types the news are aimed at are more comfortable with push than pull news? (BTW: Isn't RSS also an attempt at introducing the push back into the pull Web?) Another psychological effect: Being a subscriber to the Netzticker makes you somehow feel part of "the industry". I dunno, maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Also, the text ads between the news item are some of the very few ads anywhere I find myself actually reading (well, skimming). The same goes for the job ads in the right column on the page you hit after you've chosen headlines. From an advertisment viewpoint they must be doing something right. It's always been nagging me that I can't figure out what exactly it is ...
Posted by: ubique at November 18, 2003 04:48 PMI don't read it, I'm not sure I even heard of it before, but then maybe I'm indeed just not part of the industry. :)
Posted by: Michel Dänzer at November 19, 2003 01:52 AMMichel: Sorry, I didn't define "the industry" thoroughly enough. But I think ubique nails it, that reading the Netzticker defines "the industry" already. But more generally speaking, I meant the people in the internet ("new media"?) business primarly concerned with business and political developments rather than technical developments.
ubique: Of course, I'd keep the mailing list format but would add the web component. I think that would keep the current advantages (including most advertising vehicles), but would add many other positive things. Maybe Michel would have stumbled on them a long time ago through a search engine?
On the other hand, maybe the collective experience of several thousand like minded people clicking through that awkward interface right after lunch is an important part of the community building process of this industry? :-)
Posted by: Bernhard Seefeld at November 19, 2003 03:37 PMI ask you, support your resource always in the Internet so it is done with we with the site about contemporary sofa and bed. At you very well it turns out.
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