The future of news is mobile, technology-driven, reader-aware, insight and opinion. Understanding the limitations and opportunities of mobile news presentation and reader engagement is critical to success. Designing for mobile news is more than making a “newspaper for a phone.” It requires a fundamental shift in the mentality of the editorial staff, and an understanding of the Internet connected conversation cycle that is attached to every single news event. Here are seven factors to consider.

1. Editorial Thought and The Three News Cycles of Any Event

A smaller physical canvas to present news and information on forces editors to select only the best of the best information. This information should be the most current your organization can provide and the most relevant to the individual reader (See The Power of Local below). This information should not be fed in from an AP news feed that can be found elsewhere nor be the headlines from the print edition of the paper printed hours earlier. To have a viable product, present your biggest, most unique ideas and information first. For example, if there’s an important meeting at city hall, do you have (1) pre-meeting, (2) during meeting and (3) post-meeting analysis, commentary and perspective available? We believe every single news event has these 3 cycles, and you should have an editorial strategy to provide insight and be relevant at each cycle.

2. The Power of Local

New mobile devices pack the power of GPS and are further assisted by phone towers that help triangulate precise positioning of the device relative to geography. This presents an incredible opportunity to leverage information that local news media are in a unique position to provide. By trending the news product to local, you provide a unique product that only you can deliver. Place your unique product front and center on the interface, use your hyper-local information and stories to build a loyal, trusted readership.

The Power of Local can also be leveraged to gather news. By encouraging your readers to contribute to the story, sending text messages, twitter posts, cameraphone images and mobile video streams, you can create a new platform where news consumption and creation merges into one interface under your news brand.

3. News as Nuggets

Instead of a write-up of a sporting event after the fact, what about 140 characters of insight each minute: before, during and after the game? There may be a place for the formal summary and insight, but what many people want is a conversation when they are thinking about it. Do you want to be part of this conversation, or just sum up what everyone else already knows and can get elsewhere? News insight and reporting, broken down into nuggets of wisdom, provide more value more frequently and gives you a voice in a real conversation. The days of “the newspaper” telling people what happened is over. Now your news organization can take advantage of journalists’ insight moment by moment, and then provide the formal insight after the fact. How many more people will read the final column if they had a conversation with and know the columnist personally?

4. Video Delivery

Traditional television is similar to traditional newspapers. These products are one-way conversations with an audience. As your writers take on an active conversation with readers and as insights are broken down into moment by moment insights, be prepared to take your show to video. Shooting on-site video during a report, or receiving video from your audience, will require video editing and news package organization and storytelling skills.

5. Infrastructure and Social Media

Don’t believe you have to own the entire delivery channel. Become a part of other channels and create your outposts there. Establish your channels on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Be where the conversation is. Be relevant and insightful in those conversations and once that trust (which comes from your participation) has taken root, begin to link back to your product offerings and editorial insights. Bloggers are a threat to ‘traditional’ news outlets because they are active participants in online social conversations and networks. News reporters and organizations must play an active role in these networks. They are real communities, just like the neighborhoods beat reporters are supposed to understand. Reporters will gain story ideas, insights and contacts faster using social networks than almost any other way.

6. The One-Handed Design Challenge

If your mobile news site cannot be consumed with a single hand, your interface has failed. What does this mean? It means you need an interface that can be entirely manipulated by a reader’s thumb while they hold their drink, steering wheel, briefcase, hand rail, baby, purse or box with the other hand.

7. What About Advertising and Revenue?

GPS-enabled devices can serve classified ads where the location of the transaction is nearby. This means courting a different type of advertiser, where micro-geography matters. Consider the game developer who has developed a game that, with one click, the reader can purchase and download to their phone? Consider designing your own apps to give your audience. The 20th century comic strip and crossword puzzle might now be a $4.99 value add and new revenue stream for your company.

Ordering a pizza has always been a phone call away. In recent years, online ordering has matured, allowing a decent ordering experience. But did the pizza order get through? You never spoke to anyone. As an early online pizza order adopter, many times I had to call the local pizza franchise to make sure they got my online order. For many, this uncertainty ruled out online ordering for good.

Over the past months Domino’s Pizza has launched and polished it’s Pizza Tracker. Not only is it easy to build your order and add your coupons, but now the process after your order is revealed. The tracker excels at showing you when the order was placed, who received the order, who made your pizza, who put the pizza in the oven, when the pizza came out of the oven, who boxed it and who is delivering the pizza to your door, by name. A “progress bar” fills from left to right at each step. There’s no more doubt in the process, and employee accountability for each step in the process is now transparent to the customer. My kids, who eagerly await a pizza delivery, and frequently ask when it will arrive, are now referred to the Pizza Tracker for a minute by minute update. As a customer, I know the name of everyone who touched my order, when they did their job and how long it took them. After receiving the order, I can rate how the process was through the Pizza Tracker interface.

Domino’s isn’t resting on this success. This summer, Domino’s co-branded the Pizza Tracker with the Warner Brothers’ blockbuster film, The Dark Knight. During this election season, the pizza tracker is asking customers their party affiliation, who they would vote for and if they plan on showing up at the polls. In addition, national maps show customers what the popular recent orders are, and which section of the country like which pizza or sandwich best. These maps demonstrate a critical mass of enthusiasm for Domino’s to the customer, showing them national participation and popularity of the products they consume.

How can you transform your offline ordering process to an exceptional online ordering process? What are the current challenges or customer hangups with your online ordering experience? When was the last time you asked your customer about their online experience? How can you then turn a weakness (such as the doubt of whether the pizza order was actually received) into a strength (where you know exactly when the order came in and who is accountable for your order)?

Delivering a great online experience is often about understanding your customers expectations, then exceeding them and creatively leveraging technology to provide something better than the real-life transaction can offer.

In Internet marketing, it’s not about how cool your site is, it’s about what your site has to offer and if people can find that offer. If you are in a niche services or products industry you must go to where the people are:

Classifieds Listings - Like Craigslist.com, where people are actively searching for a variety of products, services and trades every moment of everyday.

Party Ideas - BestParyEver.com’s business listings directory and premium sponsorship opportunities allow anyone who performs, manages or supports a party to get in front of their audience.

Small Business Networking - Biznik.com is a community for people who are building their own businesses. It’s more about sharing ideas than posting resumes and it’s where the conversations about business and entrepreneurship are taking place.

Music Recommendations - Last.fm is a community to share what you listen to with others. By viewing tastes of people that listen to what we do, we find new music all the time…by browsing randomly through Last.fm profile pages we find even broader music to explore. Advertisers could take note, that if music or related products need to build awareness, here’s your worldwide captive audience.

Being where the action takes place is not new. This principle is not limited to the online space either. Have you ever seen an intersection with four hamburger joints or 3 gas stations? You need to be where people are looking for what you have to offer. The same idea holds true for growth and learning. You can learn on your own, but combining forces with like minded people accelerates that growth.

Environment for Innovation - The Drawbackwards office is now at Gangplank, we are working on collaborative projects and advising others as an anchor tennant at this new Tech Incubator that also serves as the premier Metro Phoenix Co-working campus for web development.

A collection of links from strategy and internet marketing to Star Wars and push pins…

How To Seek Feedback - Personalize the Request

Google Friend Center - Google makes your site into a social network easy

They Don’t Use Social Media in My Industry - They’re using “it”, the question is really about it’s effectiveness and proper deployment.

Never to Early to Talk about SXSW 2009 - You can e-mail housing and they’ll send you a happy reminder when they’re getting ready to set up registration so you can get in on the best price.

Haste Is A Form of Violence - When Speed Increases, What Decreases?

Fail Harder - Video of people making relief impression of Fail Harder out of clear push pins

I’ve Heard of Star Wars Fanatics - but this is nuts…