Mobile Newspapers Too Depersonalized

Chinese research company CCID Consulting has pointed out some problems with mobile newspapers — focussed on China but relevant everywhere. “Compared with traditional media, which are masses-oriented, mobile phones as a kind of media are more personalized. However, mobile phone newspapers still lack enough personalized content.” Mobile content from newspaper publishers normally consists of repurposed content from the print newspapers, possibly arranged in some categories like “Finance and Economy” or “Sports”. This problem is found in most mobile portals which offer the same content to every user rather than personalizing the experience for each — Jennifer Wilson of HWW gave a good talk on this at Mobile Content World. Ideally, mobile newspaper portals should remember the kinds of stories the person has read before and move similar stories to the top of the list. “The information model for mobile phone newspapers should be based
on multimedia. In addition to the basic forms of information in text and pictures as in traditional newspapers, mobile phone newspapers should also have multimedia content that integrate audio, video, games, entertainment
and interaction into one body” declared CCID. (release)