DISQUS

phillipbaker · 4 months ago

Hi Barry,

The 'free' debate had left me a little unsatisfied as well. It felt like something was missing and Brad's post offers a new perspective. For example, it strikes me that consumer news sites are missing the social network piece. They made online content free but they did not start to capture the other side of the exchange (or even see it as an exchange, which is Brad's insight), by connecting users to each other and capturing their inputs (comments, sharing, social gestures etc).

Phil

cterry · 4 months ago

The real argument against using WSJ as an example of "success" in charging for content is that Yahoo Finance has a far higher readership that WSJ gave away when they first put up the $$ barrier. I think WSJ would trade their 1 million subscribers to be the number one read finance site for the dominant readership and ad revenue dollars. According to the free Compete service finance.yahoo.com vs. wsj.com: unique vistors 2 to 1 and visits 4 to 1.

WSJ lost to Yahoo just like Disney lost to Nicklelodeon when Disney originally had to be premium on Cable and Nicklelodeon was included (Free)...Disney has never regained that audience. Imagine the WSJ brand losing out to a brand upstart called Yahoo! of all things! We should donate the book: "Who moved my cheese." to Rupert!