The thoughts expressed in this blog post are not necessarily shared by eVisibility.
This week Rupert Murdoch boldly announced that he vows to charge for all content, and as a fellow Jew, I couldn’t be happier to welcome him to the tribe of the chosen people.
“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,” Murdoch stated to those very reporters that maybe on his payroll.
As with any negatively reinforced group or animal, users contest that they will not pay. I’ve previously mentioned in a post. People are averse to the idea of anything being NOT free on the internet because they feel like it is their birthright. It will be a struggle at first to launch this quixotic adventure with Murdoch, but an all too necessary one.
We (web folk) are in our heyday. The economic climate has wilted. The weak fold, while the strong grow even more so. But it will all catch up with us if we aren’t careful. Every advertising medium relished in its nascence had endured growing pains, will fail and die, and will rise again like a phoenix.
Remember that every time you catch yourself thinking that the Internet may one day be the sole advertising medium, with the platform being full multimedia consoles in the home, that you are probably right! These aren’t far from our reality, and even the socialization of our toasters and microwaves may one day lend itself to ad serving. The very stagnation that could one day affect our world has already plagued development in Radio, TV, Print, and Outdoor. Their time is long overdue to rise again, and reclaim their posts in a total marketing experience. Technology has been the great equalizer for the Internet. Nerds have brought us to the Promised Land, allowing us to triumph over the great dinosaurs through measurability and dynamism. The Internet has been fleet where others simply are not.
With the tides slowly resetting, Rupert Murdoch is approaching by way of a tidal wave.
The source of all that is media content is of course the major news affiliates, our friends in Radio, TV, and Print. News content begets blogging fodder, which inspires networking and bookmarking. Without strong, credible, and globally representative news content the internet is at a virtual intellectual stand still. Of course, the chance of no credible news sources surviving these times (in some embodiment) is very unlikely. But the dwindling is a familiar reality.
Even the grey lady has suffered major ills. Content is the utmost premium that can bring the folk, reliant on internet technology for ad serving, to their knees. This isn’t a new concept, but has resurfaced via the media revolutionary himself, Mr. Murdoch. Pay for subscription is the basis of all news outlets, but true security and protection of it is not. Google powered crawlers could likely scour the net hanging price tags on all indexed content originating from an LA Times reporter within a second’s notice. Everyone from the blogging community to The Onion would be on the hook. Linkbacks, paraphrased references within a certain percentage of matching, all paying to spread content that ‘we’ have felt we are entitled to. With any entitlement a price must be paid.
The move to completely wrap up news feeds is a wise one, even though it is reactive. Major news forces must re-instate themselves as a powerhouse with their own new identity. Newspapers will never be the Internet, so they should never try to be. Site monetization will only be worth so much at the end of the day (Facespace and Mybook will attest). Newspapers, the physical ones that kids use for paper mache projects and grill masters chuck on the fire for kindling, have been virtually unchanged in this country for 100 years. They got comfortable and stagnate. No advertising outlet should feel as though they are at the pinnacle of their development. Nothing in this world ever is.
The Old Formula
Some things simply don’t translate to the online world. Selling a piece of paper makes distribution to a mass audience cumbersome at best. Selling a single online subscription can open an Internet free for all. There was a point in the sales strategy where the news sources allowed for easy distribution to aid linking, linkback, and viral growth for their content distribution channels. The only viable outcome from such a strategy is to generate such a traffic influx that CPM’s are sold into slavery. This would be a likely scenario if it weren’t for intermediary sales outlets in the middle scalping content and repositioning it for their own user ship. This structure becomes a no-win for the papers. The ability to share does not distinguish between the simple daily news gatherer, the organic arbitrage specialist, or the freelance opinion journalist.
What may be in store?
A new system could allow for a more tedious subscription process, discerning between those labeled ‘Resellers’ and single family news readers. Intermediary news sources will be forced to open their feeds and data for third party review and be billed on a viewer basis. Sociability disabled; a certain criteria for all resellers. The same would hold suit for cheaters on the single subscription side, blocking all content socializing or opening up a tab for email sharing/link embedding. This process will be completely contingent on the Newsies to root out wrongdoers on the net like ornery truffle pigs. System hacks and cheaters will be a constant threat to this circle. But so is bankruptcy, which may be the only other option when doing business the old way. Dedicated teams will need highly specialized scraping tools.
The debate of Murdoch’s Zionist ancestry will be ignited once again. He is a revolutionary, a media mogul and a staunch businessman further cemented in the history of our great American news alliances with his recent outpouring of unpopular candor. Popularity may make you friends, but revolution begets ultimate legacy. As Murdoch forges a new path through the changing landscape of online content delivery, we wait for his tablets from Mount Sinai with open arms.
In case you’ve been in a cave for the past few weeks you know what Google Caffeine is. For you cave dwellers here it is in simple terms. Google have given the world a peak into a new architecture for its organic results. These changes will affect crawling, indexing, results of search queries, and probably a lot more.
