Переклад англійською мовою статті Ірини Андрейців «Максим Саваневський: Соцмережі вб’ють інтернет-ЗМІ». English translation of the article «Максим Саваневський: Соцмережі вб’ють інтернет-ЗМІ».

Savanevskyy claims, we are all witness important process: Internet has dramatically changed information consuming of both journalists and readers. The few basic things has changed:

• Content distribution. We used to visit news sites to read the news. Nowadays there are media, which main page is visited by less than 10% of users. There is such an indicator as the the number of transitions to the frontpage and it`s declining every year.
• The form of news` delivery has changed. They are getting shorter. 10% of readers used to close the page if the text was more than 4000 symbols. Nowadays the same number of readers close the page if the text is longer than 2000 symbols. We don`t have time for reading news and it`s a problem. News will get even more shorter. One can object that we have longreads, but in Ukraine we have just a few examples of successful longreads. I think in the nearest perspective users are not ready to read those.
• People are not ready to read online media. 16 mln users use Internet daily, but the audience of online media is not more than 4,2 mln of unique readers. Only every fourth reads at least one news piece. Out of that number one third will not read any social-political news piece. They will follow the random headline like “something happened to a football player”, “the celebrity experiences next divorce”
• The audience of Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki is very often underestimated and it`s giant. We have 3 major social media networks in Ukraine and Vkontakte is the most popular and at the same time it provides 5 times less transitions to online media compared to Facebook. That`s an incredible gap, though the audience Vkontakte 17+ is twice bigger than on Facebook. Odnoklassniki is on the same level as Facebook, though Facebook is developing incredibly fast. During the last 7 months the audience increased in 33%. In April 5,4 mln users were on Facebook, now this social media reached 7,2 mln.
• Most people do not get news from social networks, though there are surveys that claim 50-90% of the audience source information from there. Actually they just see headlines in social media and consider they`ve read the news. In Ukraine traffic from social media for average Ukrainian online media reaches 5-7%. Very successful ones get up to 10%.
• Media are often focus on 1 mln of politically obsessed members of society. And that is the fundamental problem. I`m politically obsessed as well. Media are struggling for that million. They need us to read their news. That`s why they generate political news. That information is important, but the problem is that 75% of Ukrainian users do not visit media sites, because they don`t find any interesting content over there. We were analysing regional media and it happens that 50% of their content is not actually connected to the region.
• It is necessary to enter the niche media. During last 4 years a fex quite popular niche media were developed in Ukraine that have 20-30 ths audience, but its monetizing quite well.
• Regional media are trying to compete in social media with interests-driven public groups. Conditionally speaking, they`ve lost to the group “I love Chernivtsi”. There are a lot of reasons for that. Firstly, all those groups are stealing content, that traditional media are not able to do, that`s why it`s impossible to compete for the content. Internet traffic is very important for the media, so social media is important for attracting the audience to the main page for the project`s monetization.
• Social media will slowly kill online media. In Ukraine this process is not very much obvious, but as we see it on the West and we have to accept it. Our media do not have any chance to win that competition with social media from the point of content distribution and interaction with the audience. People tend to spend more and more time in social media. On the West the process will be over in 4 years, I assume, in Ukraine - in seven years.

Photo: НВ Бизнес - Новое время