IFRA

IFRA Magazine: What do you think will be the most relevant products or services in news publishing websites next year?

Torry Pedersen: Bringing news! Fully utilizing the webs potential for timeliness, depth and multimedia in the reporting, and thus unlocking the true potential of a medium without restraints towards deadlines, space or one dimensional storytelling.

IFRA Magazine: Could you give us some hints as to what kinds of services or products VG will be investing in (effort or resource) during 2009?

Torry Pedersen: We have required the web-TV rights for the Norwegian Football League -a demanding and promising venture. Furthermore focus will be on ad sales and analyses apart from the continuous effort to improve our editorial offering.

IFRA Magazine: VG's site is already offering web TV and video... will we see more activity here, and how do you think they will evolve in the near future? What is the main advantage for using video on a newspaper site?

Torry Pedersen: Yes. Moving images will be a commodity for news websites. Video will further bring down the barriers between TV and the web.

Although I don't think our kind of web sites ever will become video only mediums -- for online newspapers video is just another kind of image -- mastering video is fundamental when it comes to staying relevant in the battle of people's finite amount of time to spend on media."

IFRA Magazine: Schibsted has had some experience with search engines (Sesam). Although the results were not exactly what they expected, how relevant do you think search activities, and activities with search engines such as Google and Yahoo, will be in the next years?

Torry Pedersen: Search is sort of the DNA of the web. Hence you have to have a strategy towards the giants - or more correct - the giant!

IFRA Magazine: How is VG using/incorporating social networks?

Torry Pedersen: Blogs, video uploads, discussion forums and other web 2.0 features are integrated in the editorial storytelling. Furthermore we operate a community with 70 percent of all Norwegian teenagers registered as an stand-alone entity. We've also begun, in a very low scale, to promote some of our stuff using Facebook for instance. These are early days, but who knows: In a few years we may be talking about "FBO" just as much as we're discussing "SEO" today.