It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not.

    The two industries are very different, of course: One focuses its lens on the public events that change our world; the other is concerned largely with the personal stuff that happens behind the scenes. But under the hood, social media and newspapers have more than a little in common.

    Both live or die on delivering timely, engaging, and relevant content to readers. Both monetize primarily by selling ads, not subscriptions. Both compete for readers' attention in a digital universe with an ever-expanding number of distractions.

    So why is it that Facebook (FB) was valued at $104 billion in its 2012 IPO, while the Washington Post (WPO) was just offloaded in a fire sale for less than 1/400th of that amount? Why has Twitter grown from obscurity to 200 million users in the last seven years, while the Post has seen its paid circulation free fall?

    Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience.

    As Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, no stranger to the digital arena, assumes the helm of the embattled Post, he might consider a few of these lessons:

1) Relevance -- Put people first:

    Perhaps the greatest criticism of newspapers today is that they have lost relevance to their own readers. Writing on the decline of the Post, New York Times media columnist David Carr points out that "[the] days when people snapped open the daily paper to find out the things they should care about were long past ..." Big newspapers, in particular, have proven startlingly inept at delivering timely, relevant news to the people they serve. So, naturally, readers have gone elsewhere, to myriad online sources that better cater to their interests.

    Social media, for all of its limitations, is rarely irrelevant. The stream of updates on your Facebook page, for instance, is algorithmically engineered to be darn-near irresistible. Content is customized and interest-based, factoring in an elaborate history of your past interactions and network of friends, as well as of which updates have gone viral and which have flopped. The point is that instead of a monolithic brick of printed content -- delivered more or less unchanged to all subscribers -- social media offers news that is personalized and nimble. Bringing these innovations to newspapers will no doubt be a challenge, but lucky for us Bezos has a long history at Amazon of personalizing and customizing user experiences.

    报纸的衰落与社交媒体的崛起同时发生，这或许只是个巧合。但也许不是。

    这两个行业当然有很大的不同：一个聚焦于改变这个世界的公共事件；另一个则主要关心发生在镜头背后的个人经历。但在表象之下，社交媒体和报纸有许多相同之处。

    两者的生或死都取决于能否为读者提供及时、耐看和相关的内容。两者都靠卖广告、而不是订阅获取收入。在一个消遣方式不断增加的数字宇宙中，两者都在奋力争夺读者的注意力。

    那么，为什么Facebook公司在2012年首次公开募股时获得了高达1,040亿美元的估值，而刚刚被甩卖的《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)的价值还不到这个数额的四百分之一？最初籍籍无名的Twitter为什么在过去7年获得了2亿用户，而《华盛顿邮报》的发行量则呈现自由落体之势？

    我与许多旧媒体客户合作过，在最前沿目睹了新兴社交媒体的崛起和传统新闻媒体的衰落。在我看来，旧媒体显然需要向社交媒体学习许多东西，尤其是在五个关键领域：相关性、分销、速度、货币化和用户体验等方面。

    亚马逊(Amazon)创始人、数字世界的“老江湖”杰夫•贝佐斯接掌步履维艰的《华盛顿邮报》之后，他或许会考虑这些经验教训。

1）相关性——以人为本：

    报纸目前面临的最大批评或许是，它们已经与自己的读者完全脱节。撰文评述《华盛顿邮报》的衰落时，《纽约时报》( New York Times )媒体专栏作家大卫•卡尔曾经指出：“忆往昔，人们迫不及待地打开当天报纸寻找他们应该关心的事情，但这样的日子早已成为过去。”一些大报的表现尤其令人震惊：它们似乎根本无法向服务的对象提供及时且相关的新闻。于是，读者就自然而然地转移到了其他地方，即数不胜数、可以更好地迎合自己兴趣的在线资源。

    尽管社交媒体存在这样那样的局限性，但它很少提供无关紧要的新闻。比如，经算法设计，显示于用户Facebook主页的实时内容更新几乎是不可抗拒的。内容是根据用户的兴趣定制的，同时还精心考虑了人们过去的交往历史和朋友网络，以及哪些更新像病毒般扩散，哪些更新石沉大海等因素。问题的关键是，不同于大一统的印刷内容（这种方式向所有订户提供几乎不变的讯息），社交媒体提供的是个性化和敏捷的新闻。为报纸引入这些创新无疑是一个巨大的挑战，但让我们感到幸运的是，贝佐斯长期以来一直在亚马逊打造极具个性化的用户体验。

2) Distribution -- Go digital or go home:

    Step one in this process, of course, is ditching the paper's print edition once and for all. Yes, I know there's nothing like leafing through a thick Sunday paper over a second cup of coffee. But there was probably nothing like taking a horse-drawn carriage ride either. And we learned to live without that when the car came along.

    There are serious liabilities of clinging to print, which go well beyond the obvious expense of production and distribution and the environmental impact of making millions of hard copies. From a distribution perspective, a printed newspaper is really not all that customizable, trackable, or shareable (at least, not in the same way digital content is), and all of these things are hugely important to having a satisfied and growing user base.

    By contrast, a robust digital edition -- whether viewed online, on a tablet or on an e-reader -- can be endlessy and automatically customized to the needs and interests of individual users. It can evolve and improve over time to better accommodate each reader's tastes. Pages and sections can be reconfigured on the fly, based on what stories are getting traction at any moment. Plus, compelling content can be instantly shared with friends and colleagues, reaching an even larger audience.

    These very basic concepts have all been integral to the growth of social media. Yet when you print out a newspaper and plop it down on someone's doorstep, you preempt these benefits. Put another way, there are very good reasons why Amazon doesn't ship a big, fat catalogue to hundreds of millions of homes. Here's hoping Bezos brings that learning to his latest undertaking.

3) Velocity -- Put the "new" back in news:

    For better or worse, when major news breaks - from the recent Boston bombing to unrest in Egypt -- readers increasingly turn to their Twitter feeds for details. While information may not always be reliable, it is tantalizingly fresh, offering accounts well before traditional news sites.

    There's no way a newspaper site could ever match this pace -- research, verification, and analysis take time (and this is all part of the intrinsic value of a news site). But speed is still something to aspire to. For all the talk of a 24/7 news cycle, articles at leading papers are still often written at "an almost academic pace," to quote media blogger Josh Marshall. This has got to give.

    During the golden age of journalism -- the brief Woodward-and-Bernstein era when well-funded papers could produce serious investigative reports -- this approach may have been viable. But that's no longer the case. Readership is sinking, ad and classified revenue is plummeting, and these same big papers are tanking. To compete in the brave new online world, it's necessary for journalism to return to its older and less glamorous roots -- quick, short-form stories pushed out nearly as fast as the news breaks (i.e. exactly the kind of continuous news stream that online publishing is ideally suited to).

    And these are changes Bezos -- the uncontested king of logistics -- is well equipped to bring. "Bezos will come up with technological solutions to help reporters and editors be speedier and more efficient because that's what he has done at Amazon so well," notes Greg Sandoval, a former reporter at the Post now with online-only news site The Verge. Indeed, Bezos has already expressed a strong preference for email newsletters and brief reports, a hint that shorter-form stories -- already prevalent at such venerable papers as the Wall Street Journal -- may be coming to the Post.

2）分销——要么数字化，要么滚回家：

    第一步当然是彻底放弃报纸的印刷版。是的，我非常了解喝上两杯咖啡，翻阅厚厚一叠报纸周末版那种无与伦比的感受。但我们当年乘坐马车的感觉或许也是如此。不过，等到轿车时代来临，我们还是学会了没有马车的生活。

    紧握印刷版不放将带来沉重的负担，它的代价远不止生产和分销等显而易见的开支，以及制造数百万份报纸对环境的影响那么简单。从分销的角度看，一份印刷版报纸的确无法实现可定制、可追踪和共享（至少不会像数字内容那样共享）等功能，而所有这些事情都是极其重要的——唯如此，一家媒体才能够拥有一个心满意足，而且不断壮大的用户群。

    相比之下，一个强大的数字版——无论是在线阅读，还是在平板电脑后电子阅读器阅读——可以自动且永无止境地根据个体用户的需要和兴趣定制内容。随着时间的推移，它可以不断演变和完善，以更好地满足每位读者的喜好。根据哪些故事正在受到关注，页面和版块可以随时重新配置。此外，引人注目的内容可以即刻与朋友和同事共享，从而抵达更多的受众。

    这些非常基本的概念一直是社交媒体成长历程中不可或缺的因素。然而，当你印制出一份报纸，并把它放在别人家门口时，你就预先制止了这些好处。换句话说，亚马逊不向数以亿计的家庭递送一份硕大无比的产品目录有充分的理由。但愿贝佐斯能够为《华盛顿邮报》带来这种数字化变革。

3）速度——让新闻重新变“新”：

    不管怎么说，从最近的波士顿轰炸案到埃及的动荡局势，一旦出现重大新闻，越来越多的读者都开始转向Twitter了解详情。尽管这些消息或许并不总是可靠，但它们具有诱人的新鲜感，它提供讯息的时间大大早于传统新闻网站。

    报纸官网根本跟不上这种速度——它们需要对消息源进行研究、验证和分析（所有这些皆是一家新闻网站内在价值的组成部分）。但速度依然令人向往。尽管大家都在谈论一周7天，每天24小时的新闻周期，但引用媒体博客乔希•马歇尔的话说，主流报纸撰写文章的速度依然“像是在写学术论文”。报纸必须放弃这种做法。

    在新闻业的黄金时代——在这个持续时间不长、伍德沃德和伯恩斯坦们大放异彩的时期，资金充沛的报纸能够产生严肃的调查报道——这种方式或许是可行的。但现在已经行不通了。读者数量不断下降，分类广告收入急转直下。这些大报风光不再，步履维艰。为了在勇敢的新网络世界中竞争，新闻业有必要回归其更加古老、不那么光鲜的根源——以差不多与新闻同步的速度迅捷地推出短篇幅报道（这种持续的新闻流恰恰非常适合在线出版）。

    作为物流领域无可争议的王者，贝佐斯具备带来这些变化的充分条件。曾经效力于《华盛顿邮报》、现供职于在线新闻网站The Verge的记者格雷格•桑多瓦尔指出：“贝佐斯将提供技术解决方案，帮助记者和编辑更快、更高效地工作，因为他已经在亚马逊非常好地做到了这一点。”实际上，贝佐斯已经表达出了他对于电子邮件通讯和简短报道的强烈偏好。这种偏好暗示，已经盛行于《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)等大报的短篇幅报道或许将降临《华盛顿邮报》。

4) Monetization -- Make ads better:

    Early in Facebook's trajectory, Mark Zuckerberg was notorious for his refusal to monetize and his head-down focus on user growth. But when the moment did come to cash in, he turned to a time-honored approach: advertising. Ads now account for 88% of Facebook's revenue, or $1.6 billion last quarter alone.

    The irony here is that selling users' eyeballs to advertisers is something that newspapers have done forever. The formula has always been fairly simple: Give readers engaging content for nothing (or next to nothing); then charge companies to put their ads next to articles. The better the content you offer, the more users you'll get. The more users you get, the more ad revenue you make. It's not rocket science.

    But Facebook and other social networks have taken this simple approach and elevated it to a new level. Those ads on the sidebar of your Facebook page are precision-targeted, based on the wealth of demographic information you volunteer to the site everyday. Meanwhile, a new breed of native ads -- those "Sponsored Posts" and "Promoted Tweets" that look a lot like ordinary updates from friends - are popping up in news streams more and more. While they may seem gimmicky, native ads have shown to be up to 15 times as effective as traditional banner advertising.

    My point is that newspapers might be well served by playing to their strength and doubling down on advertising. Rather than fixating on paywalls and pay-to-play models that alienate users, they should work to better target ads to readers and experiment with new models, from native ads to pre-rolls. The problem of dwindling ad revenue is not an easy one -- It has kept some of the best business minds busy for much of the last decade. But here's guessing that Bezos might have a new trick or two up his sleeve.

5) User experience -- Embrace digital, don't fight it:

    Usability has been a cornerstone of the social media revolution. Facebook spread like wildfire partly because anyone -- from tween to grandmother -- can log in, open an account, and start connecting with friends, all with a minimum of fuss. Everything about the site is engineered to get people to stick around, from the percolating newsfeed to the endless shared photos and YouTube videos to the games. Proof: The average American now spends 6.75 hours every month on the site.

    By contrast, lots of newspaper sites look an awful lot like printed papers posted online. (TheWashington Post happens to be among the worst offenders.) In tech speak this is known as skeuomorphism, when new technology apes old design concepts for no clear reason. The result on many news sites is an interface that's clunky and cluttered, busily trying to cram everything "above the fold." Online presentation has opened up countless new ways to showcase information and engage readers, but traditional news sites have thus far been embarrassingly slow to embrace these changes. Even their iPad apps sometimes seem little more than "mini" papers.

    There are exceptions, however. One news site taking steps in the right direction is the New York Times. Over the last year, interactive graphics have allowed readers to explore the path of Hurricane Sandy's destruction, browse through annotated YouTube footage of the conflict in Syria and map out possible outcomes of the U.S. presidential election. All of these projects required lots of back-end work, but they show the added value that a news site can offer and represent the kind of content that will draw readers in and keep them engaged.

    News sites might also do well to take a few design cues from apps and services like Tumblr, Flipboard, and Feedly. All of these present stories in highly engaging, visual formats, with articles organized into fluidly scrolling streams that invite browsing and exploration. Among the news sites that have embraced this formula most effectively is gadget site Gizmodo..

4）货币化——让广告更好：

    在Facebook发展早期，由于拒绝赚钱，一门心思地专注于用户数量的增长，马克•扎克伯格获得了不少恶评。但当兑现的那一刻来临时，他转向了一个久经考验的获利方式：广告。现在，广告占据Facebook公司88%的收入，仅上季度的广告收入就高达16亿美元。

    具有讽刺意味的是，向广告商出售用户的眼球正是报纸一直都在做的事情。媒体的经营模式始终非常简单：向读者免费（或接近免费）提供引人入胜的内容，然后把广告置于文章旁边，向相关公司收费。你提供的内容越好，就将获得更多用户。你获得的用户越多，你就将赚取越多的广告收入。没错，这不是研究火箭，就这么简单。

    但Facebook和其他社交网络已经采取了这种简单的方式，而且还把它提升到了一个新层次。出现在用户Facebook主页侧栏的那些广告都是根据用户每天主动向这家网站提交的个人信息定向发送的，具有极其精确的针对性。与此同时，一种新型的原生广告，即“付费评论”和“推广消息”（它们看起来非常像是朋友发布的普通留言），正在越来越多地涌入新闻流之中。虽然原生广告看起来像是在玩弄伎俩，但事实证明，这类广告的有效性是传统横幅广告的15倍。

    我的观点是，于报纸而言，发挥自己的实力，加大广告力度或许是更好的生存之道。不是聚焦于收费墙和其他疏远用户的付费模式，报纸应该向读者投放更具针对性的广告，同时尝试新模式，比如原生广告和前置式贴片广告。广告收入减少并不是一个容易解决的问题——在过去十年的大部分时间里，业界精英一直在苦苦思索这个问题。但我猜测，贝佐斯或许藏有一两个锦囊妙计。

5）用户体验——拥抱数字化，不要抗拒：

    易用性一直是社交媒体革命的基石。Facebook不胫而走的部分原因是，无论是小孩子还是老奶奶，任何人都能够几乎不费任何周折地登录这家社交网站，开设一个账户，然后开始与朋友建立联系。从缓缓渗入的新闻推送，到无休无止的共享照片、YouTube视频，再到各种游戏，这家网站的一切设计都是为了让用户流连忘返。有力证据是：美国人现在每个月平均在Facebook上花费6.75个小时。

    相比之下，很多报纸官网看起来非常像是发布于网络的报纸印刷版（《华盛顿邮报》碰巧就是其中最差劲的一员）。用技术行话来说，这就是所谓的“拟物化设计”——在没有明确原因的情况下，新技术模仿旧的设计概念。它的结果是，许多新闻网站的界面笨重而杂乱，似乎是在匆匆忙忙地把一切东西置于网页的“醒目位置”。在线呈现，已经开辟了无数展示信息和吸引读者的新方式，但迄今为止，传统的新闻网站在接纳这些变化方面一直表现得非常迟缓，这一点的确令人尴尬。甚至它们的iPad应用有时候看起来似乎跟“迷你”报纸没什么差别。

    但也有例外。《纽约时报》就是一个正在向正确方向迈进的新闻网站。过去一年中，这家网站发布的交互式图形使得读者可以探索飓风桑迪(Hurricane Sandy)的破坏路径，浏览与叙利亚冲突相关、带有注解的YouTube片段，推测美国总统大选的可能结果。所有这些项目都需要大量的后台工作，但它们充分表现出一家新闻网站能够提供的附加值，代表着一种可以吸引读者，并且让他们参与进来的新闻种类。

    此外，新闻网站也可以从Tumblr、Flipboard和Feedly这类应用和服务中汲取一些设计灵感。所有这些努力将以视觉格式呈现极具吸引力的故事，被组织成流畅信息流的文章也将让读者产生浏览和探索的冲动。在已经非常有效地采用这种模式的新闻网站中，做得最好的是科技博客Gizmodo。

    Jeff Bezos doesn't face an easy task in righting the Washington Post. The paper's annual revenue is down 39% from 2005. Over the last decade, weekday paid subscriptions have been nearly halved to 481,000. Yet, despite criticisms in recent years, the quality of the paper and its reputation remain high. The issue now is finding better ways to get the right content to the right readers.

    This is a challenge that social networks have been confronting and that social media management companies like mine have been getting better at solving for years. With a digital native at the helm of the Post -- one who has made a $25 billion fortune by getting millions of customers the stuff they want, when they want it -- the paper has a golden opportunity to integrate these learnings and serve as a new model for the traditional press.

    Ryan Holmes is the CEO of HootSuite, a social media management system with 7 million users, including 79 of the Fortune 100 companies. In the trenches every day with Facebook, Twitter, and the world's largest social networks, Holmes has a unique view on the intersection of social media, government and big business.

    于杰夫•贝佐斯而言，矫正《华盛顿邮报》并不是一件容易完成的任务。这份报纸的年收入较2005年下降了39％。过去的十年中，工作日付费订户减少了接近一半，跌至48.1万。然而，尽管近年来遭受不少批评，但这份报纸的质量和声誉依然居高不下。现在的问题是，如何以更好的方式把恰当的内容推送给恰当的读者。

    这是社交网络始终面临的一个挑战。近些年来，像我们这样的社交媒体管理公司在解决这一问题方面已渐入佳境。鉴于一位数字领域的代表人物已接掌了《华盛顿邮报》——通过向数以百万计的客户随时提供他们想要的物品，贝索佐斯赚得了高达250亿美元的财富——这份拥有悠久历史的大报正面临一个千载难逢的机遇。它需要整合这些经验，为传统媒体开创一个全新的模式。

    本文作者瑞恩•霍尔默斯是社交媒体管理公司HootSuite的CEO，这家公司拥有700万用户，其中包括79家位列“财富100强”的公司。霍尔默斯每天都在跟Facebook和Twitter等世界上最大的社交网络并肩战斗，对于社交媒体、政府和大企业的交集有着独特的见解。（财富中文网）

    译者：任文科