Value doesn't always mean profit for news
I was listening to Biz Stone (a founder of Twitter) talk on the Colbert Report about the fact their social network has no business model yet. He made an interesting point that totally made a light bulb go off in my head: there is a difference between value and profit.
Right now Twitter is building value, the profit will come later.
What are your thoughts on this? Shouldn’t there be at least some plan for profit, no matter how valuable your product is?
That’s the issue with newspapers right now. The product is valuable, but online, you can’t make money off it. The value doesn’t necessarily guarantee profit.
Does that mean news online isn’t valuable? Or maybe we’re just looking for profit in the wrong places. Thoughts?
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3 Comments
I’ll disagree on two points.
1. “…but onlinne, you can’t make money off it.” Really? Online if you gain attention you CAN monetize. The newspapers are just generally HORRIBLE at finding good monetizing schemes because their business models are broken from the start. Many are stuck in old-world print paradigms.
2. “The product is valuable…” Maybe one of the reasons they aren’t monetizing is they DONT have attention or even respect of their audience. I like occasionally asking the question Guy Kawasaki asks of brands: If THIS thing went away tomorrow, would I really care? Let’s say http://www.usatoday.com closed shop tomorrow. So what. If Twitter shut down tomorrow who would care? A LOT of people.
It could be debated forever whether or not traditional news online is valuable and what schemes are best for making them a viable business. But I think that, for now, Biz is right in building value before looking towards profit. You really do need the one before the other.
I agree that you need value to build profit, but my real question is: Does value ensure profit?
I agree that you can make money off online news, in theory, but no one is doing it successfully yet.
Agreed, value in no way ensures profit. Personal opinion, but online news sites are mostly just not valuable. Are there really no news sites turning a profit on online operations?