1 – People don’t come to USA Today to “hang out”, like they do on social network sites like Facebook for example.

2 – People come to USA Today (and other news sites) to read the news. Get in. Get out. Get on w/life.

So… the social framework they’ve created doesn’t get “used”. People come, and depend on USA Today to tell them the news. Then they go. Unless you’re a news junky – and are up on current events – you don’t care about commenting on news stories or telling complete strangers which stories you think are your “favorites”. You can’t find out if your “Friends” are hanging out on the site in real time, etc.

Since the Facebook’s of the world have seemingly cornered the market on the social networking side of things, it seems to me that strategically, it would make more sense for USA Today to concentrate on getting really good at posting news – more quickly than competitors, more in-depth and investigative information, and/or concentrate on detailed coverage of special topics.

I can start my own blog and make comments on stories. Why would I start a blog there when I already have my own? Where’s the community?

I’d recommend people compare Pluck to Facebook before they take USA Today to task…Gannett’s trying to stay relevant. And if they say traffic is up, it’s not hurting them to try. At least they’re trying!

Disclaimer: I’m in client-side marketing.

What does USAToday’s own statistics say. Are numbers of comments going up or down? Is voting going up or down? I mean really 1/3 of their visitors just stopped visiting since January? (15M to 10M). Seems like the data is screwy to me.

Either the data is getting more accurate or it’s getting less accurate I don’t think this is any indication of the success / failure of their social experiement.

And…I am not sure why I care enough to waste 25 seconds typing this.

As a previous poster suggested, tech savvy local papers are both more relevant to the readers, which drive participation and the blogs by columnists get responded to. You can have an actual conversation with them without having to write a lette to the editor to get heard.

The other major trend for context setting is the trend to hyperlocal. Gannett is doing a great job with this in many markets (see the latest Wired article on Gannett) and I expect that much of that will ultimately bubble up. In short, they should not let go of this experiment unless they want to return to the core brand value they established over the last several years.

Knowing what Neuharth has stood for over the years, I expect he will push them to continue their path towards innovation and adjust to the markets response to make their offering stronger. However, I don’t think he is really in charge of day to day anymore, so who knows how it will play out.

Content is important, but context is king. What is the context of USAToday’s coverage, shallow dives across a broad spectrum of topics for the entire USA. Their brand has always been about this and people know it. Worse still, they are always trying to make everyone happy, which ultimately makes a lot of it very mediocre and less appealing – a downward spiral really. With the increasing “nicheification” made possible in digital media (and evidenced by the need for all the different Crunch brands), what is the context for passion, attention and interaction within a USA Today?

This is not a failure of the Social Network + Traditional Media model, it is a failure of USA Today to be aggressive enough with rethinking their brand and innovating to serve the needs of their core audience.

Yes, they did not consider the impact of the radical redesign on their existing audience – Yes, their core audience is mostly part of the 90% from the 1/9/90 rule – Yes, they have alienated a portion of that audience and are losing SOA with them (Share of Attention)

So what are they doing to encourage participation from those who are there? How are the identifying and supporting the contributors? How are they themselves joining the conversation?

Talk about selling out.

The 30 Sheckles they got for that ad cost them how many readers?

Who reads USA Today? What’s their core demographic? Is this demo interested in–and actively participating in–2.0 Land?

Now I don’t have those figures, but I can probably safely hazard a guess that the answer to the 2.0 question is “No.”

If you’re going to get 2.0-ish, then do so a little at a time and test-adapt-test-adapt-test.

But for God’s sake, don’t go for a drastic overnight makeover and total shift of focus. Any audience is likely to not accept such drastic .com makovers that miscalculate their basic values. Look at what happened to Netscape.com after their overnight Digg-over. *CRASH!!* And now, we hear there may not even BE a Netscape.com for much longer… If Netscape readers were looking for a Digg experience, they would have been using Digg, or any number of the other Digg-ish niche-sites out there.

What makes sites like USA Today useful for their users are the same things that make them stand out from the rest. Exclusive content, etc. Are these strengths always best served by a social-network-in-a-box approach?

Us Geeks, who browse and participate in 2.0 Land tend to forget that not every site is a perfect fit for 2.0-ness. We complain…a lot (heck, when do we ever NOT have something to bitch about)? But we also tend to be a little self-centered, and look at a lot of sites with the blinders on. What works well for TC et al., may not be a hit with all audiences of all sites.

Fundamentally, the “talk amongst yourselves” community won’t work unless there is a community to begin with. It just devolves into personal attacks, political fanaticism and spam.

When I was in college, I launched The Daily Northwestern online. (This was back before most people in college had email addresses.) I was responsible for the paper’s email address. Some prankster signed us up for a mailing list on bagpipes. That mailing list generated hundreds of emails a day back in the early 90s. Why? Because if you want to talk about bagpipes there’s a limited set of places you can go.

Look at the real world. Is there a New York City community? Aside from the days immediately after 9/11, I’d say no. The city is made up of lots of little communities. Something at NYC scale is just too big to be a community. The same goes for USA Today. It’s just too big and general.

There’s also the feeling of being talked at with sites like USA Today. The communities that I’m most likely to participate in are communities where there’s a dialog.

It’s not clear that people want single-source news commented and re-arranged by their fellow readers. Social editing may make more sense when people combine various sources on a focused topic.

And that honking Chrysler ad covered half my screen when I checked out USA Today. That has to cost a few readers.