“ How do we measure engagement? I would not measure by pageviews – in great part because I do not want contestants to just assume that it’s a site they’re inventing. See one more time Marissa Mayer on hyperpersonal news streams and me on hyperdistribution. News has to go where the community is and we no longer expect the community to come to it. It has to be of and among the community. Time is a slightly better measure of engagement but it, too, is shallow and can be manipulated with tricks. No, engagement is more about ownership: people believing that and acting as if they owned this thing. It’s theirs – as Wikipedia’s and craigslist’s communities believe they own those properties and as each of us believes we own our Facebook pages or Twitter feeds or blogs. But an opposite danger lies there as well. One shouldn’t measure engagement by contribution (as many of us did in the early days of the web). Go to Wikipedia’s 1 percent rule. So I’d say the measurement has to be made by a combination of metrics – say, time combined and attitudes: Take a baseline a survey of users of news sites today against certain beliefs – “My newspaper.com makes me part of the community of news”; “Newspaper.com is a member of my community of news just as I am”; “I feel a stake of ownership in newspaper.com”; “I feel a measure of control over newspaper.com”; “I feel a responsibility for newspaper.com”; “I am better informed with newspaper.com”. Then require that the new thing multiple some index of these factors by an impressive amount. If Facebook is 30 times more engaging than a newspaper site, then how about 10 times, even five times – that would make a huge difference in the business of news. „
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Quote posted at 6:49 PM (2 months ago) | Permalink