When Web Content is For Sale: The Problem and The Fix

Rupert Murdoch has announced recently of a move to have news content for sale.

Well, truth be told, that the idea’s nothing new. More likely than not, web content producers have this option parked for quite a while now. There are already contents that come with a price tag – like a subscription to an economist’s entries, etc. But with the titan, Rupert Murdoch, headlining this issue – it’s a different story now. According to Murdoch, they were able to make the paid-content model work as it did on their WSJ’s premium material and services.

Reality is: Traditional news delivery media is decaying – though the full retirement would not happen soon, the pinch and holes will start to leak out readership numbers and so should the advertisers. News entities should position themselves to lose 70-80% of their reliance on traditional paper inflow – at least 10-20 years from now.

The Problem

You cannot have all contents come with a price. For that to work, you might as well put Prada shoes discounts for women – and Sports Cars for men along with the subscription. With information that easy to transmit, these pay-for-news websites will 1) lose website traffic 2) have their contents pirated with the oh-so-reliable ‘copy-paste’ methodology – and eventually the problem will start to cause a damaging aftershock. Try to do the math and see what’s lost. And keep in mind – it’s not ‘mission critical’ to every average person to extract their news online. We still have cable right? Morning cable news? Prime time cable news? Etc.

Whoever dares to move in this direction is sure to dig their own online presence grave. And crawling back out and backtracking is going to be one painful drive.

The Fix

Create value – same as that of creating business value for organizations. People are willing to pay if there’s an added premium to the content. Who would like to pay for something they were able to acquire for free – and all of a sudden he has to pay for it? Businesspersons are willing to pay for those premium services and news contents. Of course they are, there is value for them – and they believe they could not get the same value anywhere else. If not create value – then enhance the value of these contents. And giving the first paragraph of the news content as ‘free’ will just frustrate the users.

One idea is to offer premium contents like subscription to top columnists’ contents, in-depth analysis of sports materials, etc. Then the rest they can leave as free content.

Be creative.

The Economic Information Highway

Did you just get a tweet update about Chrysler’s filing bankruptcy?

With social networking and micro-sites catching all the attention these days, you can get the latest news feed from CNN or the a guy from the internet named the_real_deal. The territorial dominance of social sites is trully evident. Also, news entities extending their reach through utilizing such tools.

People who barely cared to switch to CNN or BBC for news updates in the television – could now be notified instantly by just some friend miles away posting about swine flu or how the Chicago Bulls won game 6 against Boston in the NBA Playoffs.

The Headlines Ripple Effect

Generally, we start with the headlines – and the reporter’s emphasis on their use of words when delivering their news. When you hear the words “Plummets”, “Crashes”, “Wall St. Upside Down”, “Cataclismic Meltdown” – people with no relatively high economic/financial knowledge could inadvertently trigger fearful emotions and react depending on the state of his understanding of how the economy is.  In effect, ‘common’ consumers would mostly try to understand these seemingly complex world of the stock market and all and how they are affected by such. And by trying to understand – most would fall back on what they could understand – the basic attribute of what a “crash” means. In effect they hit the panic button. And herewith lies “Behavioral Finance“

The Highway

With information too freely available every corner of the World Wide Web – the data is vast and translations are infinitely vast. The expansion of information reach is exponential. Everybody’s riding the waves. Nobody can control the highway – nor does policing the highway would do any better. With the web architecture configured to expand at will – information will travel no less than a speed of light.

So how do we travel this highway?

Instead of fighting the current, the people should instead set their sails accordingly – and eventually build a better boat. Use the expansive information commute to educate the world in finances. Nobody needs a Warren Buffet brain installed in every person in the planet to better ride these kind of economic “turbulence.” A basic understanding at the very least of how the financial world works – and how it affects the common man’s daily meal.

There will be more economic bubbles in the next decade or so.

You can’t try to learn to drive when you’re already on a crazy highway.