Finland Times

Friday, 29 March, 2024
Home BUSINESSCollaborative Finnish project blazes trail for global news media
Print
Thu, 21 Aug, 2014 03:29:18 AM
FTimes-Xinhua Report by Denise Wall, August 21

An ambitious collaboration by Finnish media companies has resulted in the creation of a series of new digital services for the sector -- and made the small Nordic nation a trailblazer in designing a collective strategy for a highly competitive market sector.

     The Next Media project lasted four years from 2010 to 2013 and involved 76 Finnish media companies as well as nine universities and research organizations. The end result of the project, unveiled earlier in 2014, was the development of forward-looking customer-centric digital services as well as the mapping of new business models for the transforming sector.

     "When Next Media started there was no commercial digital publishing in Finland. Now we have hundreds of digital publications, newspapers and magazines," said Focus Area Director Eskoensio Pipatti of lead media company Sanoma, a major Helsinki-based Nordic media group operating in 10 European countries. "The transition to digital was happening anyway, but the progress was much faster because of Next Media."

     According to Pipatti, one of the key outcomes of the project was the identification of business models to help traditional media transition to a digital age -- in short, business strategies to help publishing media to survive.

     "It's clear that media companies that stick to paper will die sooner or later. So the goal was to find a business model that Finnish media could use to be profitable in the digital age," Pipatti noted.

     An important outcome was the identification of business models, such as combination subscriptions for print and digital publications, he said. "Business models around local media were also developed that solved problems such as how to compete with Google for local advertising and how to make communities on the reader side."

     Another significant result for the print industry besieged by ubiquitous and rapidly evolving digital platforms has been the development of an e-paper terminal.

     Produced by a separate development team and tested in Finnish households between May and June of this year, the e-paper terminal is near to have a second version now, according to Pipatti.

     But what's the point of an e-paper terminal in the age of tablets and e-readers?

     "We need a solution for people who don't use tablets for reading digital papers. It's also important for consumers who want more content on a spread or page than a tablet view offers, so they can skim through content," he said.

     The Sanoma R&D head highlighted a host of other innovations arising from the project. One was a prototype system for measuring consumer media usage for the purpose of media services development. Another component developed a common identification and payment system that combines customer identification with easy payment for a media product, such as a digital paper.  

     Furthermore, the project yielded big data algorithms important to media companies for targeting and content management, Pipatti said. One such algorithm for tracking user interests and context was a completely new type of self-learning algorithm that recognized the similarities between the user and various content types -- and was patented.

     Asked why this kind of highly productive sector -- wide media collaboration happened in Finland rather than anywhere else, project director Pipatti pointed out that the media sector lobby group Finnmedia actively worked with member companies to create a common strategy, and was instrumental in initiating the Next Media project.

     In spite of the intensely competitive Finnish media sector, Pipatti said, "Finnish media companies built the strategy together and saw what could be possible."

     Pipatti summed up the Next Media project as "a very unique collaboration in Finland and the world as a whole."

     The World Association of Newspapers is interested in Next Media and started a media innovation hub inspired by the Next Media project to make this kind of cooperation possible in Europe and the wider world, according to Pipatti.

     The next step for the fruitful media collaboration model will be to secure funding for a Nordic Next Media project, Pipatti concluded.

 
comments powered by Disqus
More News

 
   
Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved
Developed By -