Nose, face, cut, spite: Blocking Google

November 15, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis

german, google, newsbook, newspapers, reboot, wikipedia, wwgd

There’s been a swine flu of stupidity spreading about the Murdoch meme of blocking Google from indexing a site’s content (to which Google always replies that you’ve always been able to do that with robots.txt – so go ahead if you want). I love that The Reach Group (TRG), a German consulting company, has quantified just how damaging that would be to Google: hardly at all.

TRG took the content of the 1,000 domains controlled by the 148 German publishers that signed the so-called Hamburg Declaration (a veiled shot at Google) and analyzed how critical they are to Google search results. TRG asked the question: “How empty would the first 10 Google search results be if one could no longer find anything from the 148 German publishers?”

It’s quite another matter if Wikipedia were not there. It appears on 13% of first-page results. That is, one entity – Wikipedia – is on the treasured first page almost three times as often as all of Germany’s top publishers. How does one say this in German? Yow.

This chart shows that sites of the Hamburg Declaration publishers have 5% share of a position on the first page of search results:

This chart shows that Wikipedia has 13% share of the No. 1 position in search results:

TRG further notes that Wikipedia represents only 0.01% of pages in the Google index – vs. 4.01% for German publishers – yet even so, Wikipedia pages clearly get more clicks and links and thus, Googlejuice.

RELATED: Jason Calicanis fantasizes about Microsoft paying The New York Times to leave Google’s index for Bing. Let me explain why that would never happen. 1. The Times is not stupid. 2. Times subsidiary About.com – the only bright spot these days in the NYTimesCo’s P&L – gets 80% of its traffic and 50% of its revenue from Google. 3. See rule No. 1.

Michael Arrington then joined in the fantasy saying that News Corp. could change the balance by shifting to Bing, but ends his post with his own reality check: MySpace – increasingly a disaster in News Corp’s P&L – is attempting to negotiate its $300 million deal with Google.

Microsoft can suck up to European publishers all it wants – even adopting their ACAP “standard,” which no one in the search industry is saluting because, as Google often points out, it addresses the desires only of a small proportion of sites and it would end up aiding spammers – but it won’t make a damned bit of difference.

As Erick Schonfeld reports, also on TechCrunch, if WSJ.com turned off Google it would lose 25% of its web traffic. He quotes Hitwise, which says 15% comes from Google search, 12% from Google News – and 7% from Drudge (aggregator), and 2% from Real Clear Politics (aggregator). From HItwise:

But so what if News Corp does withdraw from Google? So what, indeed? Will other publishers join? No, they’ll celebrate the chance to grab more juice. If I saw any publishers pull out, I’d run at the chance to create topic pages to grab the little juice they have.

SEE ALSO: This analysis from The Internet Marketing Driver showing the importance of Google, Facebook, and Yahoo in driving audience to many sties. What they then do with that audience is then up to them. According to the imperatives of the link economy, it is up to he or she who gets the links to monetize them.

[Hat tip to friend Wolfgang Blau for twittering the TRG link. If I mistranslated, please corrected me.]

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Allen

“… driving audience to many sties.” I especially love the misspelled misspelling. eh.
http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/blog/fischblog Lars Fischer

*How does one say this in German? Yow*

I’m not sure what you want to say in German, but it’s most certainly not “Yow”. ;-)
- http://dagobart.wordpress.com/ wrs
  
  I guess he’d the German “Jau” in mind. However, what he’s referring to remains unclear.
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Think Differently

Actually, Jeff, this is a very interesting movement, and you need to move past fanboism and think about it. These publishers are doomed no matter how much they embrace Google, there is no magic analysis that shows the current models working, full stop. You and all their other critics know this, and when pushed on the subject, not only isn’t it not your problem, but you want them dead. Your harsh prescription is to essentially say to that that 90% of them will die but the remaining 10% will earn a subsistence wage from Google-directed traffic. What that really means is that the majority of them have nothing to lose really, only whether they get to pick the date of their demise. Given that, the only idea that really does have some chance of success is them walking away en-masse from Google. Striking, if you will. If there is any widespread movement along these lines, at least we’re now in uncharted territory. Maybe it’s suicide, maybe it actually starts to damage Google’s brand if it becomes the place you can’t get news from the names you know, and maybe, there’s a way that some other portal player emerges as the clearinghouse for this type of content, either a new one out of a news industry coalition, which reading between the lines of all of this suggests is imminent, or it Bing or Yahoo take that role.
- http://dagobart.wordpress.com/ wrs
  
  If I want to get news from the names I know, I usually also know the brand’s website URL.
  
  However, in case there’s no “clearing house” going to show up, I guess, consumers won’t want to pay for their favorite news brands, still. Especially, since they already have channels where they can consume those brands news by, be it TV or paper. Why should they want to pay again for what they’d get using those channels anyway?
  
  My guess on what effect that withdrawal will have is that consumers would loose a reason to start using the web, though people yet familiarized to the web likely would sweep off to free alternative news sites.
  
  Also, having learnt about the emerging of free projects on the net, I could imagine that wikinews might start flourishing once there’s a need for free news.
- Andy Freeman
  
  > You and all [the publisher's] other critics know this, and when pushed on the subject, not only isn’t it not your problem, but you want them dead.
  
  I don’t recall seeing anything from Jarvis that actually supports the above. I have seen that attitude attributed to him, but only by his critics, and never with supporting evidence. How about some supporting evidence? To count, it must be something that he actually wrote or said and not just someone’s interpretation.
  
  However, it is more than clear that Jarvis really wants journalists to make as much money as possible in the new world.
  
  To outsiders, many of you folks sound like sharecroppers trying to save the owner’s way of life in hopes that you’ll be allowed to keep living in misery.
  - Rob Levine
    
    >>>Actually, Jeff, this is a very interesting movement, and you need to move past fanboism and think about it. These publishers are doomed no matter how much they embrace Google, there is no magic analysis that shows the current models working, full stop.
    
    Exactly! But Jeff keeps giving newspapers advice that benefits Google – not newspapers.
    
    For example, it’s much less important how much traffic the WSJ gets from Google (a lot) than how much that traffic is worth (not a lot). If a paywall would reduce the WSJ’s traffic by half but raise the revenue-per-reader by a factor of 10, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Look at Bloomberg – doing pretty well, last I checked. . . .
  - Andy Freeman
    
    > But Jeff keeps giving newspapers advice that benefits Google – not newspapers.
    
    Oh really? How about some actual numbers? You know – newspapers that Jarvis said should “go link” and made more money when they went paywall and/or cut-off search engines?
    
    > If a paywall would reduce the WSJ’s traffic by half but raise the revenue-per-reader by a factor of 10, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
    
    If you want to suggest that Jarvis would disagree, some supporting evidence would be nice….
    
    The wisdom of that strategy depends on two numbers. If their values are different, if the 10 is closer to 1.5 or the half is closer to 90%, or both, it’s a dumb strategy.
    
    For the WSJ, those numbers may be correct. A couple of newspapers may have numbers for which that would make sense, but most don’t.
    
    > Look at Bloomberg – doing pretty well, last I checked. . . .
    
    Bloomberg and WSJ have good, valuable, and non-fungible content. Strategies that work for them won’t necessarily work for most journalists because their content doesn’t have all three of three properties. Jarvis has pointed that out.
    
    And no, changing copyright law won’t change that.
    
    I wonder what strategies Levine’s publications use?
  - Rob Levine
    
    To reply to what you said below:
    
    >>>I wonder what strategies Levine’s publications use?
    
    As I’ve told you several times, I work for Billboard. We do a little of everything – sell ads, charge quite a bit for subscriptions and run a thriving conference business. We’re doing very well – *because we have proprietary information protected by copyright law* in the form of SoundScan data.
    
    Since you ask so many questions about how I make money, what do you do?
    
    >>>To outsiders, many of you folks sound like sharecroppers trying to save the owner’s way of life in hopes that you’ll be allowed to keep living in misery.
    
    It’s people like you and Jeff who want to make us sharecroppers, depending on the Great Lord Google for any scrap of traffic it throws us. That’s a dangerous game. What if Google starts charging for traffic, changes its search terms, enters the journalism business or – more realistic – if online CPM continues to fall as the amount of online ad space continues to expand.
    
    As Think Differently points out above, depending on ‘Googelejuice,’ simply won’t work for a sizable newsroom. Even Jeff knows this. It’s time for a new strategy. Maybe the WSJ’s will work. I hope it does. Here’s my question: Why are you rooting for them to fail?
  - Andy Freeman
    
    > We’re doing very well – *because we have proprietary information protected by copyright law* in the form of SoundScan data.
    
    Good for those publications, but most news is fungible and/or not valuable, so what works for them may not work for other publications.
    
    The supporting evidence for Levine’s argument that Jarvis is wrong is that certain publications are successfully using a different strategy than what Levine attributes to Jarvis. However, that’s relevant only if Jarvis had said that all publications should use that strategy.
    
    Jarvis has pointed out that Levine mischaracterizes Jarvis’ advice. So, I’ll ask the other question – where did Jarvis say that everyone should use the same strategy, regardless of their circumstance?
    
    > Since you ask so many questions about how I make money, what do you do?
    
    One is “so many”? In fact, I didn’t even ask what Levine did to make money. I asked what strategies his publications used.
    
    > Why are you rooting for them to fail?
    
    How about some supporting evidence for that claim? I’ll happily concede that I’m pointing out why they’re going to fail. Does Levine really think that that’s the same as rooting for them to fail?
    
    > It’s people like you and Jeff who want to make us sharecroppers, depending on the Great Lord Google for any scrap of traffic it throws us.
    
    Huh? Who ever said that Google was the only source of traffic. (In fact, I’m working on a project to generate traffic outside of Google.)
    
    Jarvis and I have both written repeatedly that publications should monetize traffic they get as much as possible, by whatever means works for them, and that they should get as much profitable traffic as they can.
    
    We believe that different things work best for different publications because of the different characteristics of their content. Does Levine really disagree with that?
http://adamkuebler.com Adam Kuebler

I would just like to make a point on your last bit on where wsj.com gets most of its traffic. I would say the traffic from Google search may be drastically inflated. As many readers of wsj.com know, you can easily get around the pay wall by coping the title into a Google search. This traffic will simply move to Bing for people to do the same thing.
Scott

They are not contemplating “withdrawing from Google” as you are speculating, but rather taking the WSJ approach. So they will still show up on Google, but people will have to pay for their full articles. Sounds like a horrible move imo, but it’s certainly a different scenario than what you are spreading doom and gloom about above.
Hashim Warren

Are there are any other large online media properties who grew even though they partially or completely blocked Google search? Yes – Facebook, Craiglists, and Twitter.
Simon

News Corp boycotting Google would be like a fat guy avoiding the buffet – everyone else rubs their hands with glee.
Joaquin de Castejon

Wow, this really puts things in perspective. It sounds more and more like Murdoch just wanted some publicity, even though I wouldn’t put it past him to follow through just for spite.
Tom

These news publishers have nothing left to lose. Many of you seem to be confused about this: Google traffic contributes little to no revenue to the publishers so, really, what value is the traffic? Google is not sharing search revenue with Newscorp, so the right model is a walled garden, where they allow portals/aggregators (like Google, Bing, etc) to PAY for snippets of news. Users only get the full article if they pay the entrance fee for the walled garden. In the absence of advertising revenue sharing from Google, this is the only model that makes sense. If they don’t take a stand now, they will be EXTINCT. Other publishers may try to jump into the void left by Newscorp, but that won’t save them. They’ll die. It will simply be a matter of time. But it will happen, because Google is the only one making any money under the current model.

Let’s see what kind of value eminates from Google and other portals/aggregators when they can no longer index news content because they refused to license it from Newscorp, AP, etc. A search engine without indexed content is no longer a search engine, and Google is not stupid enough to allow this to happen. They will simply have to share the revenue that they get from search. It’s going to hit their bottom line, but the alternative of not being able to index news content is far worse for their bottom line. It will cause users to go to alternate search engines THAT DO PAY FOR NEWS to go to Bing.
- Hayden
  
  @Tom
  
  Your argument is like saying the church would be stronger if it forced users to pay to go to mass…
  - Hrush
    
    @Hayden
    
    That’s a moronic counter to Tom’s statement. Google is NOT “users,” so forcing Google to pay is NOT the same as forcing users to pay.
- Andy Freeman
  
  > Google traffic contributes little to no revenue to the publishers so, really, what value is the traffic?
  
  “Google traffic” has exactly the same revenue potential/opportunities as other non-subscription traffic, so if they’re not getting revenue from readers who find their content from search, they’re not getting revenue elsewhere either. (With relatively few exceptions, no one makes much money on-line from subscriptions.)
  
  > so the right model is a walled garden, where they allow portals/aggregators (like Google, Bing, etc) to PAY for snippets of news. Users only get the full article if they pay the entrance fee for the walled garden.
  
  That approach can be implemented without getting any revenue from search engines. However, readers tend to go elsewhere instead of paying. Getting money from Google won’t change that. And, if readers are going elsewhere, indexing the content behind the paywall won’t make Google money. Google tries really hard to not index content that isn’t profitable to them, so how much do think that they’ll pay for it?
  
  > A search engine without indexed content is no longer a search engine
  
  Not at all. A search engine without relevant and valuable to readers content is no longer a search engine – “relevant and valuable to users” matters. Paywalls don’t make content relevant or valuable.
  
  Craigslist proved that news content isn’t nearly as relevant and valuable to users as news folks believe.
http://www.marketingcugat.com Ariel Schvarzstein

Interesting. Maybe the entire thing is simply a linkbuilding exercise?
But then as many people say here, who cares if WSJ closes his access to Google. Everybody is click away anyway. everybody. And if make your site to be paid for, then you’re even more likely infuriate potential readers. Isn’t all about getting more page impressions?

It’s as if a big hotel supplier would pull out of Expedia or Booking.com. Who would care? Who would win, and who would loose out?
http://www.microkid.net Microkid

I am amazed how nobody realizes Google themselves have come up with the perfect solution a long time ago with their First Click Free policy. (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html)

I have implemented this in several large content sites and the results are great. It is the perfect solution for sites who want to restrict their content to members but still want to use Google as a valuable source of traffic (and new members).
Pedro

As a couple of posters have already pointed out, for most publishers, there’s nothing to lose in trying to go Google-free. Yes, they will lose some traffic. No, this traffic is not a solution for their survival. Also, you assume the loss is irrevocable. This is not the case – new aggregators can take their place and some people might finally start (gasp) typing in the name of the newspaper in their URL bar, not in their Google search bar. I think a good 5%-10% of “Google-referred” results were typing in newspaper brands, not story keywords.

Google’s generous “traffic” is not the solution, in fact it’s part of the problem: the more people click to read for free the less these publishers can afford to create any content. I am sure blogs and others who publish semi-professional and amateur content (no offense) will benefit – so you should rejoice, Jeff! But I am also certain that, as for myself, I won’t be using Google News stuffed with 3rd rate newspapers and blogs. I think the BING deal has a chance.

Finally, I don’t think the efforts to establish a new protocol replacing de-facto standard robots.txt are stupid at all – Google’s just scared because the scan the sites ostensibly for their search engine index and then help themselves with the data for other applications and sites. This has to stop and I think sooner or later it will stop. Publishers just need to have some balls and stop listening to Computer Science majors.
- http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
  
  Nothing to lose? No, only their audience and business.
  - Hrush
    
    Jeff – how is the current Google traffic helping them? From the looks of things, it isn’t helping them at all. Their revenues are down, layoffs are up and the outlook is not improving.
    
    So, what’s wrong with them telling Google to go shove its traffic up its arse?
    
    Can you actually prove how this traffic benefits them or are you content to live in your single-author media universe where eyeballs are all that matter?
    - http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
      
      See David Carr’s blog post and the Ad Age article to which he links. I’ll let you look it up.
- Andy Freeman
  
  > Finally, I don’t think the efforts to establish a new protocol replacing de-facto standard robots.txt are stupid at all
  
  How about describing exactly what said new protocol will enable that robots.txt doesn’t?
  
  The answer isn’t “the new protocol will let sites charge search engines”. They can do that and more today; any site can use robots.txt to block any/all search engines if said search engine doesn’t agree to whatever terms the site chooses.
  
  And, sites can be set up so all reader traffic goes through approved landing pages. A given url can be free today and go through a paywall tomorrow. And so on.
  
  > Publishers just need to have some balls and stop listening to Computer Science majors.
  
  If you’re going to argue that a protocol has technology properties ….
http://alexandraschmidt.com/ Alex

This is so not about “veiled threats” aimed at Google, but rather content producers’ own survival.

The problem is this: the Internet is set up as a giant question-answer machine, where the only items with any value are those that come up as an answer to a question in search. News producers aren’t trying to answer questions like, “Where do I find a cheap divorce attorney” — but crappy properties like about.com are. Something’s wrong with the world when that site is valued higher than nytimescom.

Don’t blame news producers for wanting to exist outside the giant question-answer machine, on a (nonexistent) platform that values them differently…and don’t equate that desire with trying to bring down Google. Not everything is about Google!
- http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
  
  Then exist outside it. Cut off Google. Then see what life is like. But remember: when you cut off Google, you’re not cutting off Google. You’re cutting off the world you allegedly want to serve.
  - wonkette
    
    “when you cut off Google . . . You’re cutting [yourself] off [from] the world you allegedly want to serve.” True, Jeff. But that’s another one of the unspoken problems here. So many people use Google to find things that businesses know that if they don’t have placement on Google they will lose those eyeballs/visitors/customers. And that’s bad for those businesses, not just monetarily but also politically: too many business thus become dependent on chiefly one and only one source of most of their traffic and thus income; Google. It gives Google too much power, albeit power that was granted to it by a popularity contest. It is also interesting that Google itself makes money off of OTHER people’s content: indexing other people’s websites, books, etc. And it doesn’t have to pay those people: Why not? Google wants people to pay them through ads? That’s why I am glad that sites like Facebook block Google. Not just a privacy issue but a control issue: I don’t want one service — whether it be Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. — to be the one portal through which all eyes and access must go. I’d rather than many portals to limit the control by any one of them. And that’s why I hope Facebook keeps growing to overtake Google in reach, probably by the end of 2010 or early 2011. Two elephants are better than one. I’m so glad that Google didn’t buy Facebook, aren’t you? (Besides, most FB staff hate Google from what I have been told.)
- http://dagobart.wordpress.com/ wrs
  
  Similarly to what Jeff already stated: If they want to “exist outside the giant question-answer machine” — or for short: do something new/something never tried before/something without rounded out business/revenue model: Fine, shall they do. Issue is: without demand no revenue. So, it might be quite a hard way to perform a reality check.
  - http://alexandraschmidt.com/ Alex
    
    The world news producers want to serve isn’t being served by Google because they fulfill two very different needs (question-answer vis-a-vis informed news — we don’t know what we don’t know, after all). What news producers need is a “cable TV”-like equivalent to the question-answer machine. I call for an ad-free, search engine-free Internet that users subscribe to. My wallet, at least, is at the ready.
  - Andy Freeman
    
    > I call for an ad-free, search engine-free Internet that users subscribe to. My wallet, at least, is at the ready.
    
    You don’t need a new/different internet to get what you want. All you need are sites that choose to work that way. There are no technical obstacles to setting up such sites today.
    
    As far as “cable-TV” goes, I’ll note that premium channels such as HBO run ads these days.
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/ Tom Foremski

Murdoch’s public display of criticism against Google is designed to gain maximum publicity and help group together a large number of publishers to implement paywalls at the same time–and negotiate a payment from Google and others.

If GOOG doesn’t have access to a large amount of content it can’t “index all the world’s information.” What else doesn’t it have? Google users would wonder… And Google’s goal is the *index” not the free content. It doesn’t much care if the content is free or not, it needs to have the best index. If it has large chunks missing then that is a very bad scenario for Google.

Murdoch has a lot of levers he can pull to optimize his business, he can vary the amount of free content, he can optimize pages for different traffic sources, etc. Google doesn’t have too many options. It has painted itself into a corner — it has to protect its index at all costs. http://bit.ly/dFo46
- wonkette
  
  I wouldn’t say that Google has painted itself into a corner. Google is always looking for new “free” content — content that other people like you and me worked hard to create but Google gets to make $$$ off of our hard work by selling ads both for and against that content.
  I wish I could do that.
Ben Anthony

I’m kind of excited, these that control now fret without confidence of it. Sure sure cut off access or modify the source, but it’s content that needs to stream the need.

It may not be right or wrong, but it will be nice to see the exchange of content control from the big. Even so, this will be a good 3 years before it’s streamed into what is and is not for us the content consumers.
http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/ CaptiousNut

Good post.

Been trading for 14 years….never touched or saw any reason to read the WSJ. And I laugh at *professionals* who do.

Is it a good paper? Yeah, better than the others for sure.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a *must read*.

Has anyone EVER bought an article that has been *teased* by the introductory paragraph or two?
Tim Peters

Jeff, you really are just repeating the tired old “link economy” Google fanboy mantra. Not even Google is that religious anymore. They know they have been free-riding on the content for too long, and they know time has come to pay the piper. They would like to postpone that of course, and pay as little as possible.

Here is my prediction: in 2010, Google will start paying for feeds from NY Times, WSJ and the like.
Tim Peters

As for “abundance of content”, there are not many newspapers in America with people on the ground in Afghanistan or China or India with in-depth reporting that you find in NY Times. That content *is* scarce, contrary to your axiomatic abundance of content.

Mark Cuban and Jason Calacanis, who both know how to make money on the internet (more than you do, with all due respect), think Google’s free ride will end.
- Hrush
  
  Jeff thinks that a legion of solo-bloggers is a good replacement for journalism. Too bad there are enough other monkeys who believe the same thing.
  - http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
    
    No, Jeff doesn’t believe that.
    
    Lesson: Don’t believe anonymous commenters who don’t have the guts to use their name or intellectual honesty to link to the proof of their allegation….
    
    See our models at http://newsinnovation.com. Many journalists there working collaboratively with the community as well because they can now.
- Eric Gauvin
  
  @jeff
  
  Please don’t run and hide behind your “professor” persona. What you presented with your new models is just DIY mini-newspapers. Even the participants at the conference said you looked like you were “reinventing the wheel.” To which you responded, “that’s what I do.”
  
  It does appear that you have gone to great effort to promote the idea of bloggers as a replacement for the large newspapers we have today.
  - http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis
    
    I said they are a building block for collaboration and networks.
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http://techdusts.com Mayank Agarwal

Well…quite true it will be a treat for other online publishers. Some thing similar i wrote a few days back in my blog post http://techdusts.com/2009/11/10/news-corp-to-block-google-search-engine-and-other-news-aggregators-from-its0sites-like-wsj-new-yorker/
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http://TheNumerati.net steve baker

Bloomberg is not a clear-cut example of the value of paid news. What makes their terminals indispensable is up-to-the-second data and a wealth of analytic tools.
- http://advision-media.com/ Coffee Sleeves
  
  Steve, i am not agree with your statement that Bloomberg is a Good example for these paid news.
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The Future

Hello, boys. You may not recognize me because I ain’t your bitch like you’ve assumed all these years, but I’m the future as it’s really going down. And I just wanna say you’re all wrong. You think you know me, but you don’t. You can’t shape or control me; you lack the power. I’m beyond your sweaty Baby Boom mitts. (And, yes, as the future, Jeff, I understand your generation has such little time remaining to make your permanent mark, after the failure of the Utopia your come-on-people-now-smile-on-your-brothers once promised; the clock tick-tocks slowly, as you know, but it tick-tocks nonetheless — and it’s one merciless motherfucker, amirite?) You just get to sit back, helplessly, and watch me transpire. Some of you won’t like me — especially those of you alleged techno-voyants with impressive lungs and the ability to transfer tired marketing vernacular into pseudo-revolutionary piffle, who can’t admit to themselves that they’re less interested in me as I happen than in how they’ll somehow profit from what they hope will happen — but that’s OK. We’ll all share somehow.

Oh, Jeff: By the by, the past says hello. Says you were great on “Moonlighting.”
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http://emediavitals.com Prescott Shibles

I ran some numbers on this very issue before Jason came out with his take on it. If they actually licensed the content to Bing. It factors in lost traffic and advertising dollars lost. I think it’s an interesting strategy if you can get enough scale in participating publishers.

http://emediavitals.com/article/38/advice-naa-and-mpa-monetize-microsoftyahoo-deal
http://www.onesherpa.com Andee Sellman, One Sherpa

Hey Jeff,
I still really like your thinking even if it has caused a bit of a storm in this post. I guess some of the best comments are those that stirr up emotions and this post seems to have certainly done that.
It never ceases to amaze me how some people can always see the cup half empty and others see that very same cup half full.
Given that the business model for news has always included in it the revenue from advertising to make the numbers work it seems to me that talking about making a model stand up on paying for revenue from content ONLY requires consumers to change their value equation significantly.
Given that the internet on masse seems to be going the opposite direction on content value by making so much available for free I can’t work out what type of consumer would support this other way.
I guess it can only be those who love being in a controlled media space and who want to profit from the notion of value being created from scarcity
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http://www.thereachgroup.de/ Christoph Burseg

Hey Jeff, thank you for mentioning out study! We are very happy to see our data being picked up and discussed! All the best from Hamburg/Germany
Christoph
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http://www.splustech.com/ Third Party Logistics

thanks man

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