WSJ Social rethinks distribution strategy

Megan Garber of the Nieman Journalism Lab looks at the strategy behind The Wall Street Journal‘s new WSJ Social application available on Facebook.

Garber writes, “With WSJ Social, the Journal is purposely ‘navigating the content within the app around people,’ Baratz told me, and making ‘every user an editor’; the app, in large part, she says, is about ‘elevating the role of people as curators of content.’ The end result: ‘When you walk into the app, you have this very curated publication,’ Baratz says — one that could, if done right, provide users with a nice mix of personalization and serendipity.

“There’s a competitive element to the app, as well. WSJ Social ranks each of the app’s user-editors on a leaderboard according to the number of people that have added those editors to their editor lists. The plan is to reward top editors over time — the reward after the first month being, potentially, a WSJ stipple portrait of the winners. ‘We really want to show that it’s not a game,’ Baratz says. ‘We really think that these people are curators,’ doing important distributive work that, at scale, could prove immensely valuable to the WSJ — and prizes are meant to acknowledge that.

“And…what about the Journal’s paywall? While premium content on WSJ.com will remain premium in its Facebook app, the Journal has made a sponsorship arrangement with Dell that will keep app content free for users for the first month of WSJ Social’s existence. (So far, that’s the only deal that’s been brokered — but it’s easy to see, if the app proves popular, other companies taking advantage of the sponsorship opportunity and keeping the app’s content free for all on a month-by-month basis.) And the Journal will keep all the revenue from ads that appear within the app.”

Read more here.