Punchng.com redesigns homepage, but still missing it!
Punchng.com, a leading newspaper website in Nigeria as redesigned its website to step up web 2.0. In our recent rankings (here and here), punchng.com as been dropping consistently oweing to a decision to monetize its News content. Some said that decision is outside of the world! But am still curious about why punch has not reverted this stand.
The new design looks aestetic and clean. With translation and search features. It also redesigned the news headlines structure to reflect how other top international site do. With an integrated youtube video on the homepage, this is a great leap to putting human feeling on the site.
The content are still subscription base while ONLY the blog section is open for free view and comment.
Gradually moving towards Web 2.0
I will not say punchng.com as fully become a web 2.0 site because most of web 2.0 (Which includes, Free and open content, visitors participation features, engagement, cross media appearance etc) are still missing! While 234next.com remains the only web 2.0 centric site in the newspaper industry, I see punch challenging the stand IF only some of their strategies are revised.
I need to reiterate here that only the internet this age, the scarcity we face if not of Information but of Attention. Any site that is able to garner as many attention it can, will surely smile to the bank… as Google!
What is your take?
Well, I think that Punch has done what they can:
1. They’ve got blogs, though there are hardly any comments on them.
2. They’ve got Facebook share links
3. They’ve got RSS (that wasn’t working when I tried)
What else…?
Perhaps positioning their Twitter and Facebook page links close to the bottom of the page, instead of at the top means they simply don’t get it!
Can someone teach them how to engage with their readers better?
Yea! Indeed, Loy they have done what they could! I do want to believe that punch has a solid brand offline and they are expected to bring the brand online and capitalize on it.
Punch is synonymous to news not blog, for any business that misses on its core competency, it wont go too far!
The model on the internet is base on attention, as you may know, information is not scarce on the internet its attention that is scarce, hence any site that is able to garner the attention should not toy with it (as punch is doing), but should capitalize on it for effective return.
With this blunder, other news sites have garnered enough traffic which I believe would have given them more adverts at the expense of punch.
Social media is a tool not the business!
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