“Tag, your it” and other fun Website games

The New York Times announced yesterday (release) it would allow readers to begin sharing NYT content with select other sites. While some traditional media guys may wince at this move, I applaud it and want to shed a light on it because it’s a good example of how teams should be thinking about our sites.

Team websites are actually running (or have potential to run) several business models in parallel. Each model should be designed to make money, or save money for the team.

Here’s how we do it:

First and foremost, our site follows a media model. We publish content, sell ads and generate subscriptions. That’s a media model.

We also have an E commerce model. Drive visitors into our “store”, and sell them t-shirts and jerseys. That’s E-Commerce.

We also have a lead generation model. Invite visitors to join our season ticket waiting list or inquire about sponsorship opportunities. That’s a lead generation model.

We also have a customer service model. Allow fans to interact with our service staff through our site…submit “cases” and receive follow up communication from the team. That’s a customer service model.

And there’s more. Add to these our “internal” models – like our production system, a web-based platform which we use to track creative projects (like ad design) through our office; or our ad-server, which we use to monitor on-line inventory and traffic; or our media relations site, which allows media to pull down assets for their stories…

But our primary business model right now is a media model. As such, we should pay attention to how the leading media sites are gaining traction. The NYT example I sited earlier, which is covered here by the Seattle PI is a great example.

Not only are they building community on their own site by allowing comments, they are also allowing readers to tag NYT content so that it is picked up by other sites on the broader Internet, like DIGG.

Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager, NYTimes.com said, “We’re very excited about offering our readers a new tool to share their favorite New York Times content. This new capability extends the Web-based conversation while encouraging new communities of readers to share and discuss a wide range of interests, whether by linking to an article about politics from their homepage or adding coverage of world news to their blogs.”

The tool is now featured on all free article pages across the site. It’s labeled “share” and positioned with the e-mail and print tools.

This a particularly savvy move because it essentially sets the content free to be picked up, talked about and mashed up on other sites. NYT is showing that it appreciates the “free” spirit of the Internet to help build the NYT.COM brand, and it has faith that traffic will find its way back to NYT.COM as a result.

This seemingly obvious strategy is much more difficult that it appears when you’re a media giant accustomed to commanding and controlling access to your content.

Here at the Colts we’re adding reader comments to the design of our new homepage, which will be making its debut soon. But we haven’t taken the step to allow users to “digg” our stuff. I think we need to do that too.

Meanwhile, we’re working on two other deals along these lines, one with a widget syndicaton service and one with an on-line gaming company. Watch for these things to pop up (just a figure of speech) at colts.com VERY soon.