April 3, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Value of Data
April 3, 2011 at 10:39 pm
No problem for occasional browsers on NYT:
The newspaper is eager not to alienate its existing readers online, so each month the first 20 articles will be free.
April 4, 2011 at 3:04 am
I was just reading the line before your mentioning of the Zune subscription model and thinking: 'the Zune model would be a suitable solution'... the I read the next line of the editorial...
I think at Microsoft they nailed the issue pretty well: it's a convenient payment system (I think for all parties involved): finally a reasonable compromise was found between content producers and content consumers.
Almost for a decade (after the initial napster download orgy :-D) I' ve been saying that I was more than happy to pay for the content I enjoy (as a software developer I find quite right paying for the work of someone even if it' not a material good) but I wished to pay a reasonable price and now I can. Moreover I have the freedom to plan my (in this case) music budget for the year and then forget about it.
I really think this will be the way to go for some time, until the next content market evolution that is.
April 4, 2011 at 5:09 am
While charging for News stories my be a viable option for newspapers, I dont think that translates well into information provided by sites such as this. The information while having some value is available from other sources. Also keep in mind that the main product, information is provided to sites such as this for free by members. If you start to charge for it then you should also expect to pay for it. I would also suggest that if you charge for the information then you have a greater responsibility and liability for its accuracy and its origin.
April 4, 2011 at 5:36 am
Here in the UK, the Times newspaper started charging for online content last year.
However, IMHO, it has made two mistakes:
1. It priced itself close to the price of purchaing the newspaper on a daily basis. This was far too high for many of us who just want to read the occasional article that we've been alerted to by NewsNow (or one of the other news aggregation services that allows you to browse headlines that match search criteria of your choice).
2. It kept the on-screen ads. If you're going to pay a substantial sum of money each month, do you really want to have your content cluttered up with advertisments?
April 4, 2011 at 6:31 am
This is just the start of things to come. You will start to see a lot of changes and restrictions down the road to the Internet. it used to be a free-for-all for any organization that could post things there they could not say on televison or print in the newspapers. This will change. The FCC is coming to the Internet 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
April 4, 2011 at 9:00 am
I think a lot of news has to be somehow free to access. That might mean ads or it might mean 'piggy backed' on more substantial content that people are willing to pay for (actual analysis, considered opinion, educational, etc.). I could easily imagine short news items being available for free as 'gateways' into paid content that goes more in depth with the story, as long as the 'gateway item' is not just a content-free teaser of the likes we see on TV ads for news stories. Although I suppose there might even be room for that, too. I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks a month for a subscription to something like that and if the paid content was consistently high-quality I wouldn't even mind paying a buck to get past a gateway article that seemed particularly interesting. That would leave open the potential for multi-level subsriptions: $20/year to get past 1 gateway item per week plus $1 for every 'pass' beyond that at the bottom end $60/year for unlimited access. Maybe even a separate charge for 'citation rights' (links that bypass the gateway item directly to the paid content without requiring the actual end user to pony up).
One thing I don't like is the way some organizations are charging for access to content that they don't actually pay for themselves. I just read a book called Newsonomics that described just that business model and how some early entrants are making it work. I don't mind paying for good aggregation, but not when the sources themselves are left uncompensated.
April 4, 2011 at 9:13 am
David Crowder (4/4/2011)
While charging for News stories my be a viable option for newspapers, I dont think that translates well into information provided by sites such as this. The information while having some value is available from other sources. Also keep in mind that the main product, information is provided to sites such as this for free by members. If you start to charge for it then you should also expect to pay for it. I would also suggest that if you charge for the information then you have a greater responsibility and liability for its accuracy and its origin.
We do pay for articles, but you are correct in terms of the forums. We don't pay for that information, and I wouldn't ever expect to charge for it.
I think we will start to see more pay models on the Internet as more high quality information is available, and people are willing to pay for it.
April 4, 2011 at 11:23 am
Social Networking will keep the NYT and others trying this business model from succeeding. People in the Middle East and Japan are not going to the NYT website for news, they are using FB, Twitter, et al. News has evolved into a real-time medium and newspapers can't compete, much less charge for news that is minutes old.
Jeff Langdon (@jlangdon)
April 4, 2011 at 2:39 pm
While the thought of concentrating more power in the hands of carriers keeps me up at night, I think something that might be workable for content is something similar to the cable TV model, where a basic subscription fee gets a basic content bundle, and you can add specialty content either a la carte from the content provider, or in incremental related bundles (sports, movies, music, tech, academic, professional, etc.). Perhaps it could even be profitable to be a content agregator independent of carriers. Are you listening, AOL?
April 4, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Jeff Langdon (4/4/2011)
Social Networking will keep the NYT and others trying this business model from succeeding. People in the Middle East and Japan are not going to the NYT website for news, they are using FB, Twitter, et al. News has evolved into a real-time medium and newspapers can't compete, much less charge for news that is minutes old.Jeff Langdon (@jlangdon)
Further, tradtional media doesn't sustain itself with subscriptions - it relies heavily on advertising & classifieds. That market is shrinking very quickly and media entities like the NYT are desperately trying to morph into transactional businesses. Unfortunately for them, Google pretty much owns that space. In reality, the NYT is already dead as a traditional media & news outlet.
James Stover, McDBA
April 4, 2011 at 5:45 pm
I can see paying for an authoritative, credible information source if the information was important enough to me. But I find it odd that both the NYT and the WSJ charge for most of their opinion content online. If you want to persuade people to a point of view, do you really want to put barriers between your potential audience and your ideas?
April 4, 2011 at 6:07 pm
jeff.mach (4/4/2011)
I can see paying for an authoritative, credible information source if the information was important enough to me. But I find it odd that both the NYT and the WSJ charge for most of their opinion content online. If you want to persuade people to a point of view, do you really want to put barriers between your potential audience and your ideas?
The Wall Street Journal actually makes sense to me. Half of their pieces are opinions on the current business news found elsewhere, half of it the headliners. They sell both, to try to sum up and edumacate their business users. The Times is primarily a news reporting service, and their opinion pieces are mostly fluff..
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April 4, 2011 at 10:10 pm
I read the line leading into the commentary about Zune and it gave me pause. Steve alluded to SSC going to a subscription model where access to certain areas may require payment. I like the idea and I also like the idea of free content. When you have high quality articles - I can see good reason for that requiring payment. It does remind me of the "great power comes great responsibility" saying. It would seem that a more involved process of tech-editing articles may be required. That may also mean that more editors may have to become involved ;-). I can see that helping the articles rise to a new level of accuracy and being better overall content. There are articles on this site that are worth the pay model.
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April 4, 2011 at 11:02 pm
I guess I'll be the rogue here and say that paying for information doesn't guarantee the quality of the information.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
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