Business 2.0 Locks Up Their Content
from the bad-decision dept
I had noticed last night that Business 2.0 was doing some weird things. All of the articles I read had only one or two paragraphs on the first page, and then you needed to click to the next page to read the rest. Each time I clicked on "next", I got a page not found. That's why, for all the Business 2.0 stories I posted recently, I used the "printer" copy. The front page copy was useless with only a single paragraph. Now I understand why. Continuing with AOL-Time Warner's "walled garden" approach - Business 2.0 has locked up all their content. You now need to pay to read the articles - even the ones I linked to just a few hours ago. I apologize for the inconvenience if you click through. I had no idea this was happening, but it pretty much guarantees that I (and many others) won't be linking to Business 2.0 articles any more. This lessens the value of Business 2.0 to its advertisers. The content there was often good, but not worth paying for - and if people can't access it online, it takes them out of the realm of useful publications. This is going in the wrong direction. They're taking themselves out of the debate in a short-term (short-sighted) attempt to make money now. It also means their content won't be available on search engines or linked via other news sites and blogs. All this to encourage just a few people to sign up for subscriptions? I doubt that the number of incremental subscription will make up for the vast decrease in page views leading to lost ad sales. Nice to see that AOL-Time Warner still doesn't understand the internet.
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Do The Artihmetic
If you're an AOL member, the links still work. Lemme see, the total page views from outside AOL for Business 2.0 were N, resulting in ad revenue of X. AOL gets intangible value Y in good will from the internet page views. Shifting to subscriptions will decrease the page views and therefore decrease X in favor of subscription fees.
Oh, I'm sorry... I'm probably boring you by doing a cost benefits analysis. Well, too bad, that's how AOL does things now. It's hard to satisfy you, Mike- either you're publicizing the sensationalized accounts of AOL's past, or criticizing the boring business decisions they're making now, but without the actual numbers...
Last time I checked, everyone's Internet business model took a pounding and is trying to recover. Doing the arithmetic ain't sexy, but it's got to be done.
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Re: Do The Artihmetic
It's just that it seems obvious to me that the cost-benefit equation on this one looks dreadful. How many new subscriptions do you really think they're going to get by cutting this content off? The only subscriptions you can count are ones that come because people want this particular content. I'd say that number is going to be very small.
However, the traffic decrease on the Business 2.0 website will be cut by a very large number (similar attempts by other sites suggests: 90%). Then, calculate the value lost to advertisers by having 10% of the previous number of viewers. That drops as well, so the actual ad revenues drop by at least 90%, probably more.
Do you really think the few incremental subscriptions make up for a 95% drop in advertising revenue? I doubt it.
Furthermore, as they get taken off the internet, they'll get much less interest and attention, making it harder for them to seem relevant, and harder to achieve new subscriptions.
All in all, I did the cost-benefit calculation and it looks terrible. If you have different numbers, I'd love to hear them.
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Re: Do The Artihmetic
I'm not familiar with the way that the pricing works, but I notice that the techdirt site doesn't keep itself afloat via pagview advertising.
Perhaps they ran the same calculation, but they expect that subscribers, being real customers who pay for content, are going to be a more reliable revenue stream then advertisers paying for pagviews.
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Re: Do The Artihmetic
Mike is right - they just don't get the Internet whatsoever (although with MSN's pop-up and rich media ads, one could say the same about us!)
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NY Times and SJ Mercury model seems best to me
Simple, easy to understand. Read the daily paper and you don't pay. Search for it later and you do pay.
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Yeah, I noticed it, too.
As a result of their locking content, I won't get to it, so I won't read the Business 2.0 Web site, and I won't subscribe.
I guess I should consider myself duly punished.
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http://odonnellweb.com
It won't work. In the meantime, I'm not renewing Business 2.0. How well can they really cover the busines world if they are this clueless?
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Re: NY Times and SJ Mercury model seems best to me
Simple, easy to understand. Read the daily paper and you don't pay. Search for it later and you do pay.
IMO, I'm more likely to subscribe to a news site if it offers hardcopy as part of the subscription. I like the system that The Economist uses: Post a few articles for free, and require a subscription to read the rest. If your a subscriber to the magazine you get it all free. Or you can purchase individual articles cheaply.
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Google AdWords
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Re: NY Times and SJ Mercury model seems best to me
Phillip.
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