In short, they too often misrepresent data and are driven more by design than data clarity. Here’s a particularly heinous example I stumbled across on Twitter. Original link here
You need to click on it to view my bitchy markups
When it comes to infographics, just say no, kids.
Apple’s announced a new app subscription model for iTunes, which basically involves the company taking a 30% cut of all ongoing subscription fees. They already took a 30% cut but this was only on one-time purchases, meaning the publisher effectively kept 100% of ongoing revenues from subscriptions – now Apple wants 30% of those too. For subs businesses like Netflix, this looks like a lot of money being diverted to Apple.
And fair enough. Although you can’t tell that to publishers who are shocked – shocked – to find profit-making going on at Apple. Here’s why I agree with Apple.
1. Apple are charging a fair price for a valuable service. In the iPhone and iPad Apple has invented products which a lot of publishers consider to be basically magical. A device which makes people want to actually pay for stuff online. Rupert Murdoch has personally hailed iPad as the saviour of the newspaper industry.
In other words they’ve invented something of tremendous value to the publishing market, which publishers admit as such. So, why can’t they seek to capitalise on this value?
2. Apple can grow value for publishers. The 30% cut of subs looks bad on paper. But what you’ve got to consider is that you’re getting something for your money. When you subscribe direct to an online newspaper you need to redirect to a new website, enter in a whole bunch of personal info, go get your credit card from your jeans pocket, create a new password, and so on. The whole thing is a massive turn-off.
Apple have completely reinvented this. You just tap in your iTunes password and away you go. I am always completely amazed when I look at my bank statement and see how much I’ve spent in the iTunes store each month. This kind of low-barrier purchasing is the holy grail, and for publishers to now have access to it is actually a great opportunity for them to exploit. Have at it.
3. Subscribers are not really ‘your’ customers. Some publishers have complained that Apple are inserting themselves into their relationship with their own customers. The problem is, these people are as much Apple’s customers as the publishers. All the evidence suggests that people are not buying iPads so they can read their favourite magazines, they’re reading magazines so they can better enjoy their iPad. A lot of the value for users is in the Apple experience. 30%? At the very least.
Don’t believe me? Here’s an experiment. Instead of letting Apple have their 30% why not just redirect App users to a paywalled website, which can be viewed on an iPad, and where you can keep 100% of the revenues? No, I didn’t think so.
Yesterday I began to see in my tweet stream messages telling me to head to smh.com.au and vote in a poll on gay marriage. According to my tweeps the poll was mentioned on conservative Christian websites, meaning a slight majority of respondents ‘against’ gay marriage had emerged, and we should all head to smh.com.au to fix this.
As I’m sure you know, these polls are not worth the pixels they are rendered in. They suffer from what researchers call self-selection bias, meaning that rather than reliably representing the views of the readership, it just shows which self-selecting groups were most mobilised to vote. Less a poll, more a clicking contest. Even the SMH itself acknowledges this, tagging the disclaimer: “These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate”.
It’s thus pretty easy to game these polls, especially when you have a net-savvy constituency on one side of the debate. Those against the Australian government’s policy of mandatory internet filtering (as I am) routinely use their online networks to game polls on the topic, such that many show 95%+ against the internet filter. This despite independent polls from professional research organisations showing an 80% majority support the policy.
But it’s all just harmless fun, no? I used to think so, but now I’m not so sure. The reason being is that media outlets (and I’m picking on SMH here, but it’s arguably much worse with TV channels and talkback radio) insert these polls seamlessly into their serious journalism and imply a credence they don’t deserve.
So the SMH puts the poll (with tiny disclaimer) at the top of a story about gay marriage by their chief political correspondent. This lends the poll a weight it does not deserve. Often you’ll read within a news story “An SMH poll showed …”.
If a newspaper journalist had a source for a story that they knew was shifty, unreliable, and driven by a huge unspoken bias, they wouldn’t put a quote from them right at the top of their story would they? Because that is exactly what is happening here.
My view is this: unmanaged online polls are unadulterdated horseshit. If media outlets are to do them, they should cover them in disclaimers, and not report on as if they are a reliable source when they know full well they are not.
If they are going to do them, why not manage the polls correctly? A pop-up poll on their site could be done relatively cheaply and easily to an acceptable standard, with checks in place to verify identity and guard against multiple completions. And most importantly, DON’T allow people to share the poll with their (like-minded friends) via Twitter and Facebook. Then they would actually have something worth writing about, and would actually learn something about their readership (for once in their worthless lives).
