Thanks Mr. Tafler (the CEO of Pointroll) for the nice mention in this recent paidContent.org article. It’s always fun to see your product’s name (e.g., CircularCentral) up in lights (as this article was syndicated by Reuters and the Washington Post). After launching over 106 instances of CircularCentral into production, this concept is really starting to take off as the list of potential new partners is rapidly growing and includes some of the very TOP tier newspapers and portals. Way to go team!
Here is the relevant snippet from the overall article:
Integration: Kim and Tafler say that Gannett has allowed them to maintain their companies’ respective independence, as Kim notes that, “Gannett has kept us insulated from the layoffs” that have been spread throughout its community newspaper division. That said, while the two are expected to grow their businesses and attract outside clients, a bigger part of their job is shoring up Gannett’s own social media properties across its papers. In particular, PointRoll has been working with another Gannett digital property, ShopLocal on what Tafler said involves adapting traditional newspaper inserts for online. “About $10 billion is spent on the print circular business, but that area is starting to decline as well,” Tafler said. “We’re (ShopLocal and Pointroll) working with Gannett on launching its CircularCentral product across 100 of its sites. That’s just one of the ways we’re trying to drive more revenue on the digital side.”
It’s fun to grow. So yesterday another instance of CircularCentral went live which brings the total number of live sites up to 106 with the addition of our latest partner Boston.com. To learn more about the other sites that makeup this network, read more here.
- Boston.com (online side of The Boston Globe)
The latest and greatest addition to the CircularCentral network of sites - Boston.com
So bold moves today coming from Detroit’s premier newspaper – the Detroit Free Press (DFP). Starting immediately, DFP will be going to a predominantly digital content distribution model. ShopLocal is playing a key role in integrating the digital weekly sales ads (eg the circulars) within the DFP electronic edition (eEdition for short) in a very seamless manner.
Maybe Detroit should be thinking about changing it's name to 'Detroit Free Digital' as the press (eg printing) portion of their business is shrinking and the digital portion is increasing rapidly.
The electronic edition of the Detroit Free Press is login/password protected so that only paying subscribers can access it (but for some reason, this appears to be maybe temporarily turned off), so screenshots will have to suffice in showing this really innovative integration of CircularCentral off. Need to call out our new friends at Tecnavia that worked hard with the ShopLocal to make this all come to life as working out how all the moving parts work together took some real engineering on both sides.
The business goal for this project was simple. Help DFP fully re-create the physical newspaper experience in a completely digital manner. Meaning, having all the news and editorial content combined with all the newspaper (circular) ads in one unified location. So the eEdition + the eCirculars. A real win-win for consumers in Detroit that starting today.
Upon logging into DFP’s eEdition version of it’s newspaper, a user would see this:
Notice the retailer logos that are in the top right hand corner. This little 'widget' auto-scrolls through a DFP defined list of retailers throughout a user's eEdition visit
Then if a user clicked on a specific logo, that user would be taken directly within the eEdition site to the right retailer specific
Fully animated circular page turning is enabled in this view that really re-creates the print experience of browsing the newspaper ads
Then if a user wants to select another retailer’s circular ad to view, they would end up at this view:
Similar to the presentation that iTunes has made famous, all of the locally relevant circulars are able to be browsed and selected by a user in one convenient place
DFP is not shuttering it’s printing plants (or news rooms for that matter unlike many other Michigan newspapers), just reducing the volume of printed physical copies that are created. Instead, DFP is stepping up alternative distribution options, many of which are digital. These
- Home delivery via DFP “paper boys” (eg DFP’s delivery infrastructure) is halting for all days of the week except Thursday, Friday & Sunday. So for the four (4) days of the week that the paper is NOT going to be delivered to people’s homes, the following other distributions options are available:
Here is an article that gives some of the finer details of what the limited home delivery changes mean for DFP subscribers. Rest assured, the comics and crossword puzzles are still included – be it online now.
Also if you are a normal everyday user and have any questions or issues, Detroit Free Press (DFP) has setup a nice support forum – worth checking out.
Finally here is a rather detailed account of one user of the eEdition today via Information Week. Worth a read to gain some perspective on the challenges of moving many users all at once to a new platform. It’s never without a few first day challenges.
(3.50 out of 5)
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