24 takeaways from the ONA London conference on mobile

I was at the Online News Association’s #ONALondon conference all about mobile on Friday. I made extensive notes but here’s my roundup of key takeaways:
The buzz about the Buzzfeed News app
1. The Buzzfeed News app will include non-Buzzfeed news
The Buzzfeed News app, which is currently in development, will include clearly-attributed news from other outlets. “It doesn’t have to be from you to be useful”, Stacy-Marie Ishmael said. The team are “not hung up on” just sharing Buzzfeed news.
2. The app is currently in alpha and being tried by Buzzfeed staff
Stacy-Marie has been at Buzzfeed for three months and her team has been moving fast. They are now on the fifth version of the internal alpha app, which other Buzzfeed staff are using (although they are not representative of the audience). They are aiming for “the minimum delightful experience”, Stacy-Marie said.
3. Yes, a mobile team is needed
An app needs a dedicated mobile team, obsessing over headline lengths and story delivery. And it’s easier to launch with four people and scale up rather than start with the whole newsroom. “You need people who are completely obsessed in evangelising to the rest of the newsroom,” Stacy-Marie said. But “eventually, my team shouldn’t exist”, she added, explaining that she hopes the lessons will become part of the workflow.
4. Buzzfeed News will give the second-minute push alert
Buzzfeed News isn’t about breaking, it’s the “second-minute push”, reflecting and moving the story forwards as a second-day print story would.
5. The Buzzfeed News app will be in addition to the Buzzfeed app
The current Buzzfeed app is aimed at the entertainment audience. It does include news but it’s hard to find. So the News app is a focused experience for people who want news – and they are a very different group of people, Stacy-Marie said. The only cats in the Buzzfeed News app will be newsworthy cats.
6. You have to think about mobile when commissioning
If you are serious about your mobile audience, you have to think about it at the time of commissioning, Stacy-Marie said. You need to consider page load speed for images before you start the story rather than at the end.
Mobile-first newsrooms: USA Today and The Guardian
7. Simple tip: A repeat post encourages app users to come back daily
USA Today includes a ‘5 things to know’ post (which is now sponsored) in its app. It’s placed in the same spot everyday, Patty Michalski explained in response to a question on to how to drive habit and encourage people to return every day. ‘5 things to know’ is a very successful piece of content for the mobile app audience, but works less well on desktop.
8. Simple tip: Mention mobile in the news meeting
Mobile gets a mention in the morning editorial meeting at USA Today. What were the trends – by platform – the day before? What are the lessons?
9. Social media editors can commission at USA Today
USA Today’s social mobile team can commission stories. If a social media editor comes across a story, he or she can commission the breaking news team to write it.
10. Just another Mobile Monday?
Following Social Tuesday at USA Today, a day when everyone is encouraged to be social-first, the team has introduced Mobile Monday, when everyone is encouraged to think about the mobile user. It’s been “huge” for raising awareness, Patty said, and a frequent response is “I didn’t know that” as lessons are learned.
11. The Guardian can send region-specific push alerts
Guardian editors, who are based in the UK, US and Australia, can craft push alerts to suit the audience. You may need to explain who Boris Johnson is for a non-UK audience, Subhajit Banerjee said.
The Guardian is working on personalisation for news alerts (so non-football fans don’t have to receive football alerts). USA Today already offers “more discrete” alerts. The breaking news alerts are most popular but people can opt in to various topics.
12. The USA Today evening newsletter is popular
The end of the work day email newsletter, which is only a couple of months old, already has the highest open rate of any of USA Today’s email newsletters.
13. The Guardian is thinking about bookmarking
The Guardian Long Read averages 5,000 words. The Guardian team are thinking about experimenting with pagination so people can bookmark long articles to return later. (It wasn’t clear whether they are aiming for a Kindle-style page marker for readers who start reading on one device and continue on another.)
The chat about BBC chat apps
14. Don’t try and push news via WhatsApp
The BBC has carried out a couple of WhatsApp experiments (see below). The lesson? WhatsApp is not yet geared to news distribution. The team were posting three items a day during the experiments, but most of the day “was the brain-numbing process of adding contacts”, Trushar Barot explained. The BBC therefore has no plans to create a push alert service for WhatsApp.
The launch of the WhatsApp web version is a significant move, Trushar said, but you need to pair your phone to desktop and there are limitations as you can’t create new lists or add users. It’s “still a pain point”, said Trushar.
15. But do add a WhatsApp button
The BBC now has a WhatsApp button on its responsive site on mobile. The strategy is to make it easy to share BBC content rather than to push it out. The raw data on shares via the WhatsApp button is “very encouraging”, Trushar said. “It’s a no brainer not to have a WhatsApp button,” he added.
16. Chat apps are great for submitted news
WhatsApp is a really easy, simple way for audiences to send in UGC. The desktop version of WhatsApp provides “a great UGC dashboard”, Trushar said. And it’s really easy for audiences to send reactions, video and photos. Giving the example of the India rape documentary story, Trushar said the BBC had 3,000 messages in 20 minutes. (And then the app crashed.) When news is submitted via WhatsApp, the mobile number displayed is useful for verification.
17. It is possible to get UGC via Snapchat
P3, a Norwegian radio station aimed at the youth market, has a 5,000-strong following on Snapchat. Not many people responded to a call out for news, but the team did get sent a fire video by a 12-year-old girl, Ingvild Beltesbrekke said. But there’s a big challenge in that you have to be super quick to screen grab a good piece of UGC before the post disappears.
18. Newsgathering via closed chat app groups is hard
The BBC did use FireChat in newsgathering, particularly during the Hong Kong protests.
19. The BBC is on WhatsApp, Line, Yo, WeChat, BBM
WhatsApp
There’s the Indian election experiment.
The BBC also provides a public health information service on ebola. There are three types of content, based on what’s most valuable to a person in West Africa:
1. Simple text
2. Something very visual and easy to understand
3. Audio. English and French
The ebola service has 21,000 subscribers. The country codes indicate that majority (90%) of subscribers are in the target countries.
Line
The BBC has two accounts on Line (which is big in Asia); one in English, one in Hindi.
Yo
The BBC is also on Yo. “While in many ways it’s ridiculous, it’s made us think about how to motivate people to click,” said Trushar. Yo is a relatively recent launch for the BBC, where it has gathered 2,000 subscribers.
WeChat
The BBC launched on WeChat during the Indian election as a trial. The Hindi service has continued on the app.
BBM
BlackBerry Messenger is still popular in Nigeria and the Hausa service continues on the channels platform inside BBM.
20. There’s an informal emoji think tank within the BBC
Yes, you read that correctly.
Algorithms v humans
21. Economist Espresso is attracting new audiences in India
The Economist Espresso app has been enabled by 175,000 existing Economist subscribers (who get the app included in their subscription) and 30,000 others have opted for the one-month trial. It’s attracting a new global audience. Take up in India is strong, where the £2.49-a-month cost is much more accessible than the full subscription price of the weekly offering, Tom Standage explained.
The web is dying, says Farhad Manjoo
22. Facebook is appifying the news
Apps are faster and more user friendly than the web – which is dying, at least according to New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo.
Facebook app users get a fast experience, and then they click a link and they go to the slow web. Facebook’s fix? It is encouraging publishers to host content within the Facebook app.
23. The fragmentation of communication platforms is a real threat – and opportunity – for media publishers
The fragmentation of communication platforms is a real threat – and opportunity – for media publishers, Farhad said. Social platforms have been a fairly easy win. But now we have to bake content into the platform. And publishers have to create different content for each platform or app.
This makes monetization a real challenge. But you may get a more loyal audience if you put your content on Facebook as you can give people a better experience.
24. Videos in portrait mode are here thanks to Snapchat Discover
In Snapchat Discover, a recently-launched feature in partnership with news organisations, videos are displayed portrait mode. This is how many people shoot and view mobile video.