Tag Archives: New technology
WSJ launches Markets Pulse
by Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal on Monday unveiled Markets Pulse, a platform for a continuous flow of news — including blog posts, articles, videos, tweets, photos, and other elements — that readers can dip into throughout the day from their computers or from a mobile device.
Adrienne LaFrance of Nieman Lab writes, “Think of it as a daily liveblog of the markets: At this writing, Markets Pulse been updated 12 times in the past hour. Some of those are simply embeds of WSJ stories, which can be read in full without leaving the stream; others are updates of barely tweet length. (‘Dow Down 150: All indexes are down more than 1.2%.’)
“‘This is just another way for them to access our content,’ Raju Narisetti, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network, told me. ‘Obviously, a lot of our readers are paid subscribers, so they should be able to get WSJ everywhere, wherever they want it.’
“This isn’t the first time the newspaper has experimented with this kind of approach. It created a four-day stream for its Oscar coverage this February, and more recently it streamified its coverage of the presidential election in France. But Markets Pulse is built around an area of coverage rather than a finite event, which means it has the potential to be…neverending.
“Creating an open-ended stream for markets coverage makes sense for a few reasons. It’s an area that a lot of Journal readers are already tracking, and one that lends itself to constant updates. ‘Markets is kind of an ongoing story all day, especially when the U.S. markets are open, and there’s an audience that follows it fairly religiously all the time,’ Narisetti. ‘Rather than having to go to an article or a video in different, discrete places, this allows them to kind of have one place.’”
Read more here.
Financial journalists to follow in Twitter
by Chris Roush
Linette Lopez, Rob Wile and Simone Foxman of Business Insider have compiled a list of the 101 best finance people to follow on Twitter, and a number of them are business journalists.
The list includes:
Chris Adams, the markets editor for The Financial Times. “Knows what’s happening in the market as fast as anyone.”
Charles Gasparino, senior correspondent at Fox Business Network. “Love him or hate him, the man is a newsbreaker.”
John Carney, senior editor and blogger, CNBC.com. “Helps keeps world’s leading business network real.”
Matina Stevis, Dow Jones Newswires Eurozone reporter. “Dow Jones reporter Tweeting the crisis in the Eurozone. Live from Brussels.”
Katie Martin, Rob Passarella, and Bradley Davis, the Dow Jones forex team. “You’ll barely need your WSJ subscription if you follow them. ”
FT’s web app surpasses 2 million users
by Chris Roush
Just 10 months after launch, the Financial Times’ web application has surpassed two million users.
Available directly through the browser at app.ft.com, the FT Web App is built using HTML5 technology and features automatic content downloads and improvements.
The FT was the first major news publisher to launch an app of this type and was recently awarded the Global Mobile Award for Innovation in Mobile Publishing.
With the app, customers can access FT content anytime, anywhere, on a PC and multiple devices, with one log-in and one subscription payment. Close to half the app’s have bookmarked it to their home screen, replicating a native app experience.
The launch of the FT Web App has significantly boosted the newspaper’s mobile readers and now drives 12 percent of subscriptions and 19 percent of traffic to FT.com.
In the last six months the FT has seen a sharp rise in mobile users, with increases of 52 percent on smart phones and 49 percent on tablets.
Biz magazine content on the iPhone
by Chris Roush
Justin Ellis of Nieman Labs looks at how Bloomberg Businessweek is experimenting with delivering its content in different ways for iPhone readers.
Ellis writes, “As on the iPad, Businessweek offers magazine articles, videos, audio interviews, and more; new issues of the magazines are downloaded into the Newsstand. Aside from obligatory design differences, the apps are identical in content; neither offers the regular updating of a daily news app.
“The company says the app, which launched this time last year, has gained more than 100,000 subscribers on the iPad. The iPhone version is an attempt at opening up that number a little further. Oke Okaro, the global head of mobile for Bloomberg, told me it only makes sense to put its product on a device people have with them at all times. ‘Every waking hour of the day, smartphones are in our hands. We fully expect that we’re going to see a different type of usage,’ Okaro said.
“Bloomberg did add one new element in the iPhone app: it gives readers a word count for stories, making it easier to pick out the most digestible piece given whatever amount of time you have. “We know through the course of the day on iPhone people are going to come in and out, and we want to give them a perspective of the (time) commitment,” he said.
“One feature both versions share is the ability to play audio in the background, whether reading a story in the app or doing other tasks on your iPad or iPhone. Okaro believes that would be handy to someone reading on a bus, the subway or waiting for an appointment. In other words, someone most likely using a smartphone.”
Read more here.
FT’s “How to Spend It” app surpasses 100,000 downloads
by Chris Roush
Just seven months after its launch, the Financial Times‘s “How To Spend It” iPad app has surpassed 100,000 downloads.
The free app, which has been profitable since launch, offers 80 complete issues of the luxury lifestyle magazine, plus thousands of online exclusives by its award-winning team of writers. The archive is available to the user with minimal waiting time because the app intelligently downloads content as users browse.
The app includes searchable content of more than 80 editions of How To Spend It; content from the latest edition posted seven days a week with access to many features and columns before they appear in print; daily news bulletins and unique digital columns from the magazine’s award-winning team, exclusive to the digital edition; and content organized by subject rather than by print edition
The entire content is free to download and access.
“How To Spend It” editor Gillian de Bono said: “I’m delighted with the response to our innovative design which organises content logically, rather than issue by issue, so that users can search their favourite subjects, columns and writers with ease. Daily postings by our top writers also give a constant stream of quality content and a unique sense of discovery.”
“How to Spend It,” which is 17 years old, currently publishes 30 editions a year, including ten themed editions and eight Friday editions.
How business journalism has changed
by Chris Roush
Herb Greenberg, the senior stocks commentator at CNBC, writes about how his job has changed after 40 years in journalism given social media and new technology.
Greenberg writes, “Like most journalists, I always tried to have some kind of edge and, if at all possible, be first with something good. I kicked all of that up a bunch of notches in 1988, when I started writing a daily ‘Business Insider’ financial column for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Back then, as hard as my job was, it was easier (if that makes sense). While the financial wire services were slugging it out for real-time dominance, there was no financial TV. No Internet. No social media.
“Then, in the early 1990s, along came CNBC. Money managers like Jim Cramer and even CEOs started to guest host the network’s flagship show, Squawk Box. But it was more about competition. This was the first time I was worried that real-time scoops and first-hand insights could spoil something I had been working on. (When you write six columns a week, there is little room for a story getting derailed, especially as the daily deadline nears.)
“Then came the Internet and the real beginning of the blurring of the lines: David and Tom Gardner’s The Motley Fool, originally on American Online (which used non-journalists to report and analyze stocks); Cramer’s TheStreet.com, which I joined in 1998 (talk about blurring: A quality, edgy news website, aimed at the little guy, started by a former hedge fund manager); TheStreet’s Columnist Conversation, the brainchild of Jon Krim and Leland Montgomery (this was the original streaming stocks discussion, mixing the comments of a few journalists like me with investment pros like Cramer and Doug Kass. (Truth be told: I thought it was a stupid name and an even stupider idea. Boy, was I wrong.)
“Then came the blogs. Suddenly, everybody had a blog. Everybody was a journalist. Everybody, from small investor to money manager, was a legend in their own mind! (Once upon a time, while I was a columnist at at MarketWatch, I even had a blog.)”
Read more here.
Bloomberg Businessweek launches iPhone, iPod apps
by Chris Roush
Bloomberg Businessweek announced Wednesday that its magazine is now available on the iPhone and iPod touch.
Bloomberg Businessweek also announced that its iPad application, launched in April 2011, has now surpassed 100,000 subscribers. The app has helped Bloomberg broaden its reach globally with 35 percent of subscribers residing outside of the United States.
“Many of our readers own an iPhone so delivering an optimal experience and lightning fast downloads of magazine issues is critical. With the app, it takes 3 minutes or less on a 3G connection to download an entire issue to the iPhone or iPad.” said Oke Okaro, general manager and global head of Bloomberg mobile, in a statement.
Unique features of the Bloomberg Businessweek app include exclusive video featuring editor Josh Tyrangiel and his creative team as they share the story behind each week’s cover; audio from Tom Keene, Charlie Rose, and various Bloomberg editors and live market info and news on companies mentioned in articles.
Readers can subscribe for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Print magazine subscribers receive free access to Bloomberg Businessweek. iPad-only subscribers also get free access to Bloomberg Businessweeek on their iPhone and iPod touch.
How the WSJ is no longer just a newspaper
by Chris Roush
Susan King, the dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill, talks with Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal about how the newspaper is now in the television business and about his job.
How WSJ uses Pinterest
by Chris Roush
Elena Zak of 10,000 Words writes about how The Wall Street Journal uses Pinterest to improve the experience for its readers.
Zak writes, “Recently, the venerable news organization started experimenting with how to use Pinterest and created a Quotes board. Its description partially reads: ‘Editors are pinning memorable quotes appearing in The Wall Street Journal.’
“Each pin is an image of a quote from a recent WSJ story shown floating over a column of blurred out text, much like pull-quotes do in an actual story. A short description accompanies each pin, allowing the quote to stand alone. By clicking on an individual quote, readers/pinners are taken to the original story it was published in.
“‘There are so many memorable soundbites out there,’ said Brian Aguilar, a social media editor at the news organization who helped come up with the idea for the board. ‘This gives you the opportunity to really highlight them and pique people’s interest in a story.’
“This board can easily be replicated in newsrooms everywhere. I spoke (via email) with Aguilar to learn more about the board’s inspiration, how the images are created, and why the WSJ team isn’t worried about Pinterest and copyright issues.”
Read more here.
WSJ Radio Network to be distributed by TuneIn
by Chris Roush
TuneIn, a free service that lets people listen to music, sports and news from around the world, announced Thursday that it will deliver The Wall Street Journal Radio Network content to the more than 30 million TuneIn listeners.
The Wall Street Journal Radio Network provides business news and produces news programs for more than 450 radio stations.
Its content includes late-breaking and around-the-clock business news, consumer spending information, financial-market updates, and long form news and talk program. The network also distributes 23 podcast titles.
“We are thrilled to expand the reach of The Wall Street Journal Radio Network’s programming by partnering with TuneIn,” said Nancy Abramson, executive director, The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, in a statemnt. “We look forward to growing our audience and reaching more listeners on the go with business, talk and consumer news our staff works around the clock to provide.”
Read more here.
