With all the talk and media hype about the Wizened of Oz (Rupert Murdoch) deciding to put Google out of business and throw in his lot with the Borg of Bing (Microsoft), particularly as rumors abound that MS will pay the Dirty Digger dumpster loads of cash to block Google from indexing his news sites, you have to wonder how many pundits have actually thought this scenario through.
For a start, newspapers continue to demonstrate they have piss poor understanding of how Google works or of the many options they have for dealing with the 800 pound search gorilla. One of these is the “First Click Free” program, which allows them to have both a paywall and the traffic sent by Google.
As Google News exec Josh Cohen explains how it works: “If a publisher understands that quality, original content does best and therefore tries to create more, great. But there is still a lot of discussions taking place such as… ‘I have to make this content free or Google won’t index it,’ and that’s not the case. “First Click Free is only one example of the ways that publishers can make subscription content available. They can do previews, they can block it in different ways. I think there are a lot of those questions about the nuts and bolts of how you can work with us, subscriptions just being one of them.”
The funniest bit is that none of this addresses the “leaky back door” issue, whereby smart arsed users, like me, know all you have to do is copy the headline and paste it into Google Search and get the entire article placed behind the paywall for free.
Personally, I don’t think any of this *** will take place. It’s just a giant smokescreen from Murdoch, who has been known to do this kind of thing in the past. Threatening the search giant with the software giant to encourage some kind of financial deal, might just put a bigger smile on Wendy’s face when the Diggers will is finally read!
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Hi George,
With Newspapers, I would guess the price of the paper covers the cost of production, and the Advertising revenue pays for the cost of quality of content.
This is where online went wrong.
Online agencies charged silly rates to entice clients from Press to Online because clients had no faith in Online. Now they have faith, but the damage has been done unless the whole online community gets together and fixes prices for display advertising, revenues will simply continue to erode and clients will continue to take advantage of the "split thinking".
The sooner both become one, the better it will be for everyone:- client included, because number of views and number of hits do not equate to sales. As sales departments have traditionally been pro-promotional and B2B activity focussed, we may find an upsurge in client budgets in this area because no matter how much you market a product, if it's not selling, it's not selling, and that means it's not making money!!!!
Who is going to pay for information on one site when you can get it for free at another? Monitoring people's opinions is one thing, but opinions can shift like a wind across the atlantic ocean and clients have no control over this. Remember the upset and anger when Facebook changed it's main page format? Also, people don't like being "sold-to." It's foolish to pre-suppose the World thinks like investors. At least with the press, when there was good media coverage, they could measure roughly how much they could expect as a response, and peoples' thinking was not being subverted in a covert way. There are some serious moral issues here that will need to be played-out as to what is advertising, what is PR, and what is Propoganda. the whole stage is now blurred, and with it the truth also becomes blurred, and that's dangerous.
Even when a Tsunami has hit the shore, it will eventually recede. I ask myself: How many people would pay money for a lifebelt just to be sucked back out into the ocean?
If Murdoch thinks he is in trouble monetising his newspapers online, wait until self-confessed smart-arses like George find their way 'behind the paywall' for the TV content too. That'll get right up the Diggers Arsenal!
This kind of skills are very useful for my business so thank you so much.
<a href="http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com"> online job</a>
George Parker
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