News was released last week that The Independent and Times Online may look to charge for content and are investigating online subscription models in the face of sliding ad revenues.
As previously stated in another post here around large publishers struggling to find ways of maintaining profits & audiences, this issue has become prevelant within the content publishing world.
Last week many other publishers spoke out against implementing such paid content models and instead stated they prefer to focus on online advertising and paid-for products, however, it is a platform already in use by the likes of the Financial Times and Wall St Journal.
So my question is: Is anyone still willing to pay for content?
The general viewpoint at the moment is that charging for content would only suit niche publishers such as the Financial Times, whose content is not available elsewhere, but it would not be suitable to those publishers whose content is not unique and which could be easily substituted.
My personal opinion is that as information is increasingly syndicated, shared & shared again, the corresponding appetite to pay for content or to sign up for a subscription will rapidly decline whether the content is niche or not.
Thoughts?
Is anyone willing to pay for content anymore?
V Festival: 'Festival Buddy' mobile app = complete rip off...
Along with around thirty thousand other people, I attended V Festival on Saturday.
It was an awesome day with a great line up, great atmosphere and great weather.
The only three things that pissed me off on the day were the following:
1). Huge queues (up to and over an hour long)at the beer tents stemming from not enough beer tents!
2). Scheduling ERROR by not putting Snow Patrol on the main stage
3). The 'Festival Buddy' mobile application
I am unfortunately unable to make suggestions regarding Beer Tents and Line Ups because i am not an Event Organiser, but, may i suggest that next time around you increase the alcohol accessibility and do not make us walk 15 minutes from one stage to another to see equally brilliant bands which results in us missing some of the performances.....that sucked.
However my real gripe that i can whinge about was around the 'Festival Buddy' mobile application.
When i first saw this on the map print outs & line up guides i was so excited that they had finally utlised the mobile device in the perfect way.
The application allowed festival goers on any network to find line-up information, create a personal schedule, find site-specific information, and download free V Festival related content including ringtones, wallpapers and videos by simply texting a shortcode to get the download.
Sounds great right?
Wrong.
'Festival Buddy' is marketed as a 'FREE' downloadable tool which is easy to use - but what they neglected to widely promote is that fact that each update text you recieve throughout the day will cost you 55 cents PLUS there is no cap on how many of these texts you will recieve as updates are unlimited!
To add to this if you are not with Virgin Mobile (the majority of the Sydney population) then you will be charged data costs for any downloads you perform.
Perfect! So i can keep up to date on what's going on and who is on which stage but at the same time i'll be rinsing my mobile bill!
My first thought on having discovered this: 'you tight bastards....'
Every single person there (not including freebie tickets of course) had shelled out circa $140 for a ticket which is alot of money, so i don't think i'm alone in thinking that the Festival Buddy service really should have been free for each & every attendee as an added benefit within the ticket cost.
How hard would it have been to have a quick chat with the main mobile carriers and have the WAP site, data downloads & SMS zero-rated? Honestly?
Paul Shulver, music sponsorship manager for Virgin Mobile said “The Festival Buddy offers the chance for V Festival attendees to completely tailor-make their festival experience.”
Well Mr Shulver, the 'Festival Buddy' left a slightly sour note to my experience because in my view it was total rip off.
TED Talk: Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses
A talk given by Evan Williams, the genius co-founder of Twitter & Blogger.com at TED.
Amazing stats:
- 47 members of US Congress have Twitter Accounts
- Twitter originally setup as a side project to Odeo
- It was just a broadcast platform, the @ replies were built much later on...
- Platform has evolved from originally being used to keep up with family and friends to now being utilised as a mass communication device upon which people help eachother out
- Evan Williams: "when you give people easier ways to share information, more good things happen"
British Government to appoint a digital champion!
The british government is looking to appoint a high-profile person to promote the benefits of using digital technologies to all citizens.
The digital champion will take responsibility for encouraging people to use digital technology.
The call was made today by minister for digital inclusion Paul Murphy MP at the GovNet Communications' Mobile Government conference.
Murphy said that 17m people in the UK were currently digitally excluded thus missing out on opportunities of education, communication and entertainment.
He added that young people without access to digital technology were likely to suffer, particularly within their careers where 90% of job applications are now done online.
Go Britain!
Bravo!
Syndication is the future...
Now i am not going to claim to be able to solve the critical business issues these corporations are struggling with but what i can do is talk about an example of how another corporation has approached this issue.
The BBC is percieved as one of the most conservative corporations on the planet, yet they have been quietly embarking on an exciting strategic evolution which is quickly turning them into one of the worlds most forward thinking content publishers.....
In an uncharacteristic turn of events, the BBC have demonstrated an impressive and thorough understanding of our changing communications landscape.They have parted ways with their traditional british pride and relinquished control over their content.
Syndication and distribution is the new name of the game and the BBC are leading the pack. BBC Worldwide content is now widely available across the web which they have understood is entirely neccessary to reach potential users who are increasingly unlikely to come directly to BBC Worldwide’s own sites, however, they have also understood the potential commercial gains..
So as i said, whilst i cannot claim to be able to solve the business issues that some content providers are facing i can attempt to point them in the right direction and that is away from trying to fence in audiences and away from requiring people to visit their websites directly...
For example - Sky does have some cool tools they are planning to integrate such as 'Never Miss' which launched recently - a TV reminder service to cater to its online subscribers to remind them to record their favourite shows when they are coming up - but i still don't believe they need to house this within a homepage, why not turn it into an RSS feed or widget that can be taken and utilised anywhere?
Lesson of the day: Capitalise on fragmentation and syndicate like crazy!