The Equity Kicker - Latest Comments in Free is the only business model for online news

Re: Free is the only business model for online news

Hoover — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:06:39 -0000

Interesting comparison between the Guardian's approach and the FT's.

The solution for the FT would be to build a community that discusses the news like they do on the Guardian site.

However... let's not forget reality:

1) Guardian readers have more time than FT readers to discuss the news. Guardian readers' time is less valuable than that of FT readers.

2) Guardian readers have a background of debate and discussion of abstractions, gained at university. They're attracted to the site because they can continue that debate for free with like-minded readers. FT readers, on the other hand, are there to glean data. They don't want to discuss abstractions.

Re: Free is the only business model for online news

Rob Eberstein — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:40:53 -0000

Absolutely agree. Other newspaper sites are monetising in slightly different ways - dating, fantasy football & bingo etc, though not sure the FT would approve of the latter! Maybe Fantasy Stock Markets instead.

Re: Free is the only business model for online news

Will McInnes — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:42:42 -0000

Nic - I agree, although it is slightly intellectually disappointing that there isn't a new fangled business model that has emerged yet, but clearly - as you say - the advice has to be to accelerate into the freeness and distributedness of content, and to use clumsy but proven tools to monetize (advertising!).

Re: Free is the only business model for online news

Farhan Lalji — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:12:50 -0000

Interesting, wondering if the increase in traffic and ad income would offset the income from the subscribers (no matter how minimal the number of subscribers is). Would be interesting to see the wsj subs numbers and compare.