Murdoch: We’ll probably remove our sites from Google’s index
Rupert Murdoch has suggested that News Corporation is likely to make its content unfindable to users on Google when it launches its paid content strategy .
When Murdoch and other senior News Corp lieutenants have criticised aggregators such as Google for taking a free ride on its content, commentators have questioned why the company doesn’t simply make its content invisible to search engines.
Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up links to it in users’ search results.
Murdoch claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via search have little value to advertisers. Asked by Sky News political editor David Speers why News hasn’t therefore made its sites invisible to Google, Murdoch replied: “I think we will.”
Although he has previously talked at length about the role of aggregators, it is one of the first times Murdoch has discussed actually removing content from the search engines.
LOL. Yeah, good luck with that! Goodbye readers and advertisers.
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ooooh, do you think Sergei and Larry are quaking in their boots now that RM wants to take his bat and ball and go home? Interesting that the powershift from old media to digital media is so complete that it will make no difference to Google whatsoever, but will cripple News’ online ad inventory.
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Does Murdoch actually understand what he has said? Whilst News sites are destination plays, they will also gain hundreds of thousands of views via search. If somebody is researching a topic from yesteryer articles in search results can be a very handy source of info and YES MR MURDOCH I actually discover your resource and see your adverts as a result of Google getting me there…
We will see where this all ends up. There are big votes for and against paid online contect. Who is gonna get the cream, if so why are they?
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He’s still making it up as he goes! Readers of the book “The Man Who Owns The News” will know what I mean.
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He’s really going for broke isn’t he?
Come on Rupe, there’s plenty of other ways to make money from your content than charging!
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Is he serious?
He really should give it up. I’m sure he still thinks it’s a passing fad.
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Bet this was a “tough guy” ad lib moment and they won’t act on it.
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Wanting fewer users who pay for it….?? Sounds like he might be losing it, or that he just wants to copy bloomberg . “Loyal readers”?? Seriously… ppl need information for multiple sources. Why the hell would anyone just get news from one site? Further, the idea of breaking apart the products and selling them off seems to make more sense than just lumping it all together.
“Everyone can afford a newspaper…” <- ah…. I think not. Even as a company, spending the outrageous cost of subscriptions eats away a heap of our budget.
"Hard to find people under 30 buying newspapers…" And so who does he see as his target market?? Wants the retired 60+ generation to pay for it?
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Often Googs will return results even if they’ve been excluded in the robots.txt file, simply because of link text used in inbound links. But… there are ways around it (don’t tell Rupert). Good article and explanation from Matt Cutts is here http://bit.ly/3OQvmy
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Have you ever heard someone sound so unsure about something?
Doesn’t understand search and the value it provides to his sites, didn’t stop short enough of saying newspapers are on the way out, but admits no one under 30 is buying them.
For someone who is a media titan, he is sounding a little uninformed and unsure.
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Wow, all this intellectualising over Rupert. Impressive!
Let him take his media and shove it up his TNT, or feed it to his Fox, no-one really gives a shit if there’s a hundred less obnixoious one liners a day. As for real content it’s so accessible, soon no-one’ll ever have heard of News.
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MitchP, I’m really interested in your ideas around the “plenty of other ways to make money” from this content. I think RM’s position here, flawed as it may be, is sending a big message. New models of revenue for online businesses need to be conceptualised, trialled and challenged by better ones. I’d love to understand what the better ones are because I think there will be more and more pressure put on publishers in the future… especially when we consider the threat to traditional online advertising formats like banners which they rely on. Interesting times ahead.
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Last time I checked my phone bill the internet was NOT free. And now News wants to introduce another pay-wall for the content…are you kidding me? In the offline world, the equivalent would be paying a fee to enter the Newsagency as well as paying for the publication itself. Good luck guys, you’re going to need it.
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Unless he’s suddenly going to come up with a way to offer ‘unique’ content and news, he’s dreamin’. However, don’t bet against everyone else preparing their paid offerings in the meantime should News go ahead with their plans. A sniff of success and everyone will flick the switch immediately…it will be a very fine line between the tipping point of success and failure…
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Oh Noes! WHere am I gonna get my fake govt emails & naked pauline hanson pics?!
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So no one will write for them, for they won’t get read, and no one will pitch to them as their stories, if picked up, won’t get read, so…
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Also, imagine working in the online teams, watching all your efforts come to very, very little.
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Wall Street Journal has had paid subscirbers for a very, very long time. And have had their site indexeable by Google. The two are not polar opposites . . . .
Crikey has a very nice niche carved out for paid, quality current affairs, politics and business related content (= news content) and is indexable by Google spiders too .. . . .And I am sure we can all name many more examples . . .
There was a time when Yellow Pages wouldn’t allow Google to index their content . . . which paved the way for many directory competitors to get a strong foot hold in the market when YP should have absolutely dominated SEO rankings for all kinds of business category searches . . . some might say it was even their obligation to do so for their advertisers . . . . YP has since changed their strategy . . . and are very busy trying to catch up . . . .similar monopolostic thought process perhaps . . .
Give the big G credit Rupert, you need them more than they need you, and so don’t cut off your sizable nose to spite your sizable wallet.
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Rupert may well find his online content isn’t as newsworthy or sufficiently magnetic to grab the level of paying interest he’d like. No doubt in this interview and others he’d be hedging and politicking as precisely as a politician. He’s not known as an ethical, honest player in public or private moreover he’s not really done the hard yards after inheriting a newspaper in his teen years. You’d be a fair drongo if you didn’t kick with that sort of gift.
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Rupert may well find his online content isn’t as newsworthy or sufficiently magnetic to grab the level of paying interest he’d like. No doubt in this interview and others he’d be hedging and politicking as precisely as a politician. He’s not known as an ethical, honest player in public or private moreover he’s not really done the hard yards after inheriting a newspaper in his teen years. You’d be a fair drongo if you didn’t kick with that sort of gift.
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Is there anyone out there in Mumbrellaland with access to data showing the percentage of traffic arriving at News Corp sites from search engines? I can’t speak for News, but for other media it is often in the region of half the incoming traffic.
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Lionks? Starategy? Murodch?
I love my Mumbrella, but has Tim been at the voddie this Monday morning??
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Hi Bill,
According to Alexa (not totally reliable but not a bad indicator), news.com.au is preceded by a visit to:
12.55% google.com.au
10.47% google.com
6.23% facebook.com
3.43% digg.com
3.37% yahoo.com
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Oh great, it’s been updated as I wrote that. Now I look like an idiot. Damn.
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Hi Pedant, I was in the process of tidying up when you busted me. I must confess that in the rush to get our Monday email out, things sometimes get a little messy, and I generally come back up and tidy later.
Voddy? I wish…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@Jemma – For sure, There are at least two companies who have identified different ways to extract much more revenue online from existing content. My understanding is they are seeking to sell technology to the Publishers. News, Time et al all have a vested interest in exploring other ways to generate revenue other than charging. This is very achievable through these technology platforms. Heck, it would even apply to Mumbrella 🙂
Full disclosure; I work for one of them – layer Digital
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Definitive proof that you don’t have to be smart to be a billionaire
The man has no idea
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@Jemma – For sure, There are at least two companies who have identified different ways to extract much more revenue online from existing content. My understanding is they are seeking to sell technology to the Publishers. News, Time et al all have a vested interest in exploring other ways to generate revenue other than charging. This is very achievable through these technology platforms. Heck, it would even apply to Mumbrella.
Full disclosure; I work for one of them – layer Digital
Any if anyone at News is reading, give us a buzz 🙂
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Rupert can’t control his audiences anymore, and he don’t like it!
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Really interesting story.. how’ll Google’s rxn be?
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Poor guy, all he wants is those people OFF HIS LAWN!!
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Dear Rupert… Can I suggest that you send a thankyou card to Laurel Papworth.
After reading one of her posts today, I am convinced you will be able to charge for content. You see, your sometime biased stories are usually based at least in part on a degree of basic journalistic principles – eg research, facts, insight, analysis
Laurel’s dribble on the other hand has convinced me that the threat faced by the newspaper industry can’t be as bad as we first thought.
The more Laurel writes, the more people will pay you for content!
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I think that would be a great chance for smaller newspapers to get all those traffic out there on a particular story. Good Luck Murdoch with such a decision 😉
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Matt makes the key point above – Rupert pulling his sites out of Google will make not one iota of difference to Google, but have a massive (negative) impact on News’ readership.
Google succeeds because it’s products are better than anything else out there. Can News Ltd say the same? Google products spend years in ‘Beta’ or get released as experiments to see how people use them (Eg Google Wave).
The question is, by Rupert’s rationale, should Google be charging for its products too? I don’t think so.
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Riduculous.. In the world of openess, Murdoch is going to put condom on their content to prevent Google diease.. shame
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…Just remember that Rupert Murdoch is the man responsible for the Fox “news” channel. This is the man who went to federal court in order to obtain the legal right to spread false news reports while other, more reputable sources provide real news for free. Good riddance.
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He should probably hide his hideous Fox News from the public as well
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Don’t think he could achieve whatever it is he plans to do by pulling his sites out of Google, because let’s face it news should be open direct and available to everyone.
Vampire High and Vampires in History, Geography, Anatomy, and Poetry
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WHAT A MORON
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Well, good luck Rupert…
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Murdoch is old school, I mean really really old school, like somebody from 17th century bullying his way through 20th, its isnt a question about how much money you make from news its how you make it and Mr Murdoch is clearly out of ideas to make a decent living.
This old fella has lost common sense to figure out if his sites are not part of aggregations then nobody gives a damn, people will find it elsewhere, bottom line is MR MURDOCH IS NOT THE NEWS HE IS JUST A MESSENGER OF NEWS, ONE OLD NASTY GREEDY ONE HOW HAS LIVES LONGER THAN HE SHOULD HAVE
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Unless Mr Murdoch has got something big up his sleave, then without doubt his sites will lose traffic, Google don’t care as theres plenty other free news sites out there.
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For a guy in his position, I’m totally astonished at how disconnected from the industry he appears to be and how little he seems to know about the internet! It’s funny.
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ha. who remembers napster?
that was itunes for free….. now who knows what itunes is? ahhh thats right paid content….
see you in a few years.
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A search of the Simpson’s on YouTube brings up 176,000 results.
Just one telephone call & they’ll take em off. Better start warming up that dialing finger Ruppie.
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Yes, traffic will go down, but revenue will go up. RM may not know much about the internet or technology, but he knows a heck of a lot about business, especially HIS business. People will pay to read Fox’s rhetoric, driving income up. Traffic will go down, driving down fixed costs along with it. Fox is clearly going for “quality” traffic with this kind of strategy, not quantity. With a model like this, they can have less ads, making their ad space more valuable. A move like this actually makes sense if you see Fox as a business of biased right wing info porn rather than as a news outlet.
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If Murdoch really believes this is the way to go, he should be doing it now, to change consumer behaviour and build up brand loyalty. After all, once people realise they can’t get totheir favourite News Corp site through Google, they’ll realise how much they value it. Won’t they?
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when i first heard of Rupert Mordor wanting his precious propaganda to be invisible to Google i wonder why they wouldn’t just use the “robots.txt” document.
but nooo he had to (in typical wealthier than thou fashion) demand that everyone else re-code their website to his demands.
i for one would love to see him remove his website from the internet.
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Hi Rupert,
Well good luck with that strategy.
I predict that News Corp will be out of business within 12 months when no-one can find your web content.
What on earth makes you think that you can charge for something which you can get for free elsewhere?
Do a Google News search sometime and see what I mean. Or better still find out about a web service called “Twitter” and see how that messes up your strategy.
Regards
Simon
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For a guy with so much money, he is perhaps the most selfish bastard I could ever imagine. I hope he dies soon (natural causes) so we can piss on his memory.
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“ha. who remembers napster?
that was itunes for free….. now who knows what itunes is? ahhh thats right paid content….
see you in a few years.”
Leaving aside the fact that iTunes has hardly put an end to ‘free’ (illegal) music file sharing, we gotta consider that analogy.
What if by long tradition, people had never paid more than a couple of bucks for a random collection of 50 up-to-the-minute songs? What if you could happily ‘consume’ the average song in 60 seconds, and never want to play it again? And what if there were always 2, 3 or more other musicians perfectly legally releasing much the same music, based on the same song structures, at the same time, making talk of ‘copyright’ in one particular song effectively meaningless?
A truth that business has been banging its head against for a decade now: people consuming mass-market media will flick you a shiny coin in the street. They will not provide you with their credit card details et al to let you take just a dollar or two from them online. Get used to it and come up with some other business model. Paid subscribers are fine for niche market products. Google is not a niche market product; NewsCorp can become one if it wants to, but how it’ll pay its journos then is anyone’s guess.
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After a decade of mostly failed monetization efforts, the Spotify model of flat monthly subscription for all you can eat music may save the music industry.
Instead of calling aggregators names, news publishers should be working together to develop an open model for syndicating content and thereby creating a new marketplace for the next generation of news apps to emerge.
If the big publishers start doing what the record labels are doing right now, and begin licencing news aggregators to resell their premium content for flat monthly fees, I believe we will see an explosion of new models for enhancing the news experience. This will save and grow the industry into the future.
The lesson from the music industry is for publishers to not try and solve the problem themselves, but create a marketplace for the web entrepreneurs to innovate and solve the problem organically for them.
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Lols! good luck with that Mr. murdoch. No one will miss you and your faux news anyways! the world will be a better place and some hardliners will be poorer paying you 😛
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Thanks, RM, that should help clean things up a bit.
P.S. you won’t be missed.
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Hey kiddies: “free shit” isn’t a sustainable business model. You’ll see for yourselves as soon as you unglue your ass from mommie’s basement.
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Uh…”readers who randomly reach a page via search”? ‘Cause Google just serves up random pages in the search results, right?
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Cut your nose off to spite your face comes to mind.
Advertising revenue is News Corps biggest revenue stream by reducing access to your Sites will reduce revenues.
Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk
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“Murdoch claimed that readers who randomly reach a page via search have little value to advertisers.”
What do you mean, random? If I reach a news article via search, doesn’t that search tell you what I’m interested in? Can’t you show me relevant ads? That’s basically Google’s whole business model.
Compare two people who are reading an article. One of them actively searched for the topic, and the other just saw the headline and clicked. Who is more engaged with the subject matter? Why is that engagement not valuable to advertisers?
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I would be glad to see his his brand of “News” wither and die.
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I give it a week before he puts them back.
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I really wish that Google had a setting that would not even show me news articles from any of RM’s companies. I don’t trust his version of the truth anyways.
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Yes please! An internet world without News Coorp is a better environment. If they make this move by themselves I would be thrilled!
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on second thought google should ban Rupert Molech’s sites or any mention of him from showing up at all, forever. beginning as soon as they can write the code to do so. then when he makes glenn beck start bitching and crying about wanting back into the series of tubes aggregation cue – we won’t have to see it.
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I didn’t even know this guy was still alive. Does he even own a computer.
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Good luck with that Rupert. Bet all the employees are wondering what their next move should be.
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Murdoch, take your factory of lies and get off the internet. We don’t want you here anyway. I know you think your bulls*** train is so valuable, but we don’t really want to pay money to be lied to.
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Hey Saul,
This isn’t about “free shit”, and you know it. At least, you know it if you have half a brain in your head. It also isn’t about a sustainable business model. It’s about the way the Internet has revolutionized the dissemination of information around the world. It’s about old dinosaurs like Murdoch getting desperate as they start to recognize that they can’t keep their giant media-brainwashing machine together as they used to. They can no longer suck money out of people while at the same time jamming their own propaganda down their throats. And those “kiddies” you speak of? Currently some of them are probably already your boss, and if not, they are graduating university and will very soon be your boss. So stfu, wake up and realize this truth: The world has already changed, and business models in the future have changed right along with it. You’re missing the boat.
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RM is an old man, with an old-world way of thinking trying to compete in a new-world format. Unfortunately he doesn’t understand the fundamental proposition of what the web offers and how he could manipulate it for his own benefit. This is the same guy who bought myspace for half a billon dollars and what the hell is myspace doing now…dying a slow death to facebook that’s what. Go ahead RM keep doing what you’re doing and Newscorp will also die a slow death as well. cheers.
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Isn’t Murdoch dead? Is he still alive?
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He is only bluffing. He is not an idiot to do that. He perfectly knows that if his company does that he will receive half the number of users that visit his sites. Also myspace will stop receiving a lot of users and know that facebook is wining a lot of their users this is not a good choice.
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Murdoch has way too much control over too many sources and countries. Even in the UK he owns SKY and a percentage of some terrestrial channels.
At least we will always have the unbiased view of the BBC to look on as long as we pay our TV Licences.
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Love reading the comments and how pro everyone is of google, let’s forget googles huge leap into our privacy for a second, and let’s talk about the larger issue at play here, quality content that is (from all sides of your political persuasion) providing diversity and different opinions and voices, and importantly is at least somewhat accountable to the liable and privacy laws of the respective legislation. Can someone please explain how google is helping the creation of this? Seems to me they are riding off the back of this and making billions from it and investing a very very small proportion of their billions into innovation.
If News or Microsoft or even Apple behaved in the manner similar to Google they would be hung and quartered, please stop the unquestioning love affair with Google and start digging around to see how they are misusing their power to make more $$$.
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Great idea Rupert. Here’s some more sound financial advice, care of C. Montgomery Burns: Put 50% in the blue chips: Trans-Atlantic Zeppelin, Malcomated Spats Company, Congreves Imflammable Powders, US Hay, and the up and coming Baltimore Opera Hat Company
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Rupert;
“YOU CAN DO IT! ” Become invisible and charge us the big bucks. Please, please, please…
No worries…
Bill
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Hmm… time to go short on NewsCorp, I think…
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this reminds me of another brilliant quote by another old fart who just doesn’t get today’s techy times:
“the internet is a series of tubes”
MUHAHAH i wonder if anyone actually takes what he says seriously….
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LOL i saw Murdoch on some aussie show last night…. he comes across as so ignorant…. how the hell did he become so rich???!?!
that being said… what is more dangerous than an idiot?…. that is an idiot with a bucket full of money…. he scares me they same way Bush used to scare me….
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I really don’t understand his argument that you can’t make money off of advertising. Google is very very wealthy and that’s how they make the bulk of your income. The problem is that you aren’t good at making money through advertising, or you’re too greedy.
I also don’t see his argument that aspiring musicians can’t make it today because of piracy. Look at all the rappers, miley cyrus, and all these blown up musicians… I think all the money is just consolidated in a few super rich musicians.
Btw- Fuck Fox news, fuck what they’ve done to the simpsons, fuck what rupert murdoch has done to media in general.
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The point is that Google (Facebook, Flickr, etc. and other aggregators) makes money by using content generated by other people. You guys are going to pay somehow no matter what, although the charges may be hidden and perhaps more nefarious. I’d personally rather know where my money goes, to whom I’m paying, and what they are ultimately doing with my money. Like I said, “free shit” is not a sustainable business model. Why would one be surprised that content generators, who currently are getting little to no piece of the action unless they cover their pages with annoying ads that a good percentage of us are blocking anyway, are pissed? Content providers are going under, and all you guys are telling them to live with it and times have changed. The irony, of course, is that if all content providers take their toys and go home, Google is screwed.
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Free vs Paid content aside, it doesn’t make sense to me that they want to remove their sites from G’s index when clearly they receive traffic from the Big G. It’s like saying to someone “here, have a free barbeque chicken for your picnic”. And then they turn it down. Who doesn’t love a good barbeque chicken?
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oh my god this guy’s on a different planet. He actually thinks people are going to pay for information? PLUS he thinks that the hard-copy of the newspaper wont disappear for another twenty years…. He’s insane. Except for “zines” and novelty papers…. the newpaper in it’s classic form is already gone rupert… old-schoolers read it as habit, and they’ll be dead soon.
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He says he is concerned with public policy and what kind of society we’re building. That he wants to be remembered for someone who helped the world become a better place.
How can you charge people for information that is viable business for everyone else to charge nothing?
If you really want to make society a better place then free information is the way to go. Enrich the environment of people and society will benefit.
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Rupert Murdoch deserves our respect even if he makes no sense lately. Murdoch invented the internet during WWII whilst protecting the free world by flying bombing missions across occupied France and later, Germany. This selfless genius donates billions of dollars to charity anonymously every day, whilst eschewing all trappings of wealth personally by living in an unheated mud hut in the remote Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea. A devoutly religious family man, Mr. Murdoch worships the institution of marriage off and on, and kisses the Pope’s feet whenever he feels like it, just because he can. What a top bloke. Oh, and he is also a champion soccer goalie, scoring frequently for his club with loose lips and the confidence that only great wads of money can bring.
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Perhaps they’ll even ordain a few editorialists and build the New Church of Foxentology, while they’re at it. Better that than to expose themselves to the danger that is the Intraweb’s open exchange of ideas.
http://www.mepreport.com/2009/.....-internet/
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Well said Aaron
We can only hope this greedy, scheming old fart will do the world a favor and exclude all his right wing propaganda ridden crap and hatemongering publications from the internet.
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good riddance is right! this will save all sorts of bandwidth too.
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Mr Murdoch,
Please do it! Please remove your content from Google and all the other aggregators and then we will see what happens. Don’t back pedal, stand by your words, be courageous, ignore all the Internet users who have it so wrong. All those people who made you money by ‘randomly’ finding your site.
Best of luck!
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Love him or hate him, the guy knows how to make money…
RM surrounds himself with advisors who are paid a lot of money to do what they do. It’s pretty obvious that thousands upon thousand of man hours have been invested in how they will charge for content, and the argument would have to be pretty water tight for him to come out and say the things he has, so if you think he delivered this sound byte off the cuff (ignorant of the digital space) you really do need to think again.
If I were a betting man I’d know where my money would be. I wait with great interest to see how this all plays out…
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it seems that this guy just wants to show how smart he is
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A ‘free’ news site gets a lot more visitors to it, obvioulsy, so there for the ‘count’ of people who stop by it daily is good for ad revenue. To stop people finding your articles via a search (google) and then shutting out everyone who wants to read it, only allowing in paid people means Murdochs site willhave about 20-30% of traffic of other sites. I think it’s called media suicide. Who would advertise on a site that is NOT included in search engiens and is locked out from 90% of the population from reading it.
Stay tuned, the next headline will be ‘The downfall of News Ltd: Murdoch blames Google for not having their websites in their search engine!’
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Aaaah,
But you are all missing a point here. Google already pays for content. They have done for some time. All RM needs to do is go to Bing and say for 5% of Microsoft we will make news exclusively indexed by Bing. Bing instantly get a campaign (Think Bing – The only place you get Fox news or WSJ etc etc) and Google looses some market share. Plus Rupert gets a seat at the search table, and really that’s what this is all about.
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Hey don’t knock RM’s internet nouse
He bought Myspace just before eveyone bar Muso’s abandobned ship to Facebook
He definitely has his finger on the pule, shame its only his own
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Who gives a shit about this ? nothing more than an old man who believes it all revolves around himself . Yes Sir NoSir. You pathetic little man. We can get world and local news without you.
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Check out what Rupe did to Myspace:
http://trends.google.com/websi.....038;sort=0
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Michael said: if you think he delivered this sound byte off the cuff (ignorant of the digital space) you really do need to think again.
I agree entirely. If Murdoch had figured out a way to make $$$, he’d just get on and do it, secretly and selfishly. The fact that he’s making speeches, and encouraging others to join him, and the project hasn’t got firm delivery dates, mkes me think he’s bluffing.
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People here seem to think that Google is an invincible giant and will always be the portal to the internet. Think back a few years and nobody had even heard of “Google”.
Remember when Microsoft was the unassailable leader of the IT world?
While Google has some noble aspirations – it also still earns 99% of its revenue from advertising. Much of that advertising depends on some pretty hefty invasion of user’s privacy to target content.
More and more content providers are realising that despite the power of Google, its can be a pretty ineffective form of monetisation. If there is a shift away from advertising with Google, the company will quite quickly start to look like an empty house of cards.
In the long term I think Murdoch will be on the winning side of this debate.
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I’m with Nathan that is seems odd that RM thinks a qualified visitor is a random hit worth nothing. Isn’t a search visitor worth as much as Google makes from Adwords which is also bucketloads higher margin than RM is making from his news properties?
Although he has said some odd things lately I’m surprised so many people comment about him so personally. I think he’s one of our greatest business people and visionaries.
He has said many many things over the last 20 years during his visits back here which Australia could have used to generate enormous extra wealth and stopped the standard of living continuing to fall during that whole period. Instead of relying on beaches, minerals and overseas students we could have been something different and more in tune with leading countries. Of course his ideas and comments were poopooed and scoffed at by local politicians of both sides and local business leaders.
I wish we had many more Murdochs, but at the same time I don’t understand where he is coming from recently, but he may yet surprise us.
Walter Adamson @g2m
http://xeesm.com/walter
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To wipe it with the used newspapers RUPERT is supplying – $2 – weekend edition – more paper than the average 3 X double ply toilet roll – Its 2009 – going on 2010 Rupert Free INTERNET – seeya
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An interesting article from the BBC regarding the Johnston Press sites in the UK being locked down:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8385342.stm
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Look I know you probably can’t imagine paid news content working, but if you could how would it work?
We all run our own media empires differently, and all of your comments sound so absolute, it is the end of RM. Do you think RM could have a team of advisors, quite possibly as intelligent and savvy as you? Probably. So could it work? Hell yeah! There is a business model which works and just because you can’t fathom it, doesn’t make it impossible. Maybe you are thinking the content will be the same. Maybe you believe that total traffic numbers have intrinsic value to advertisers. Imagine visitors have habits, like, I don’t know, bite, snack, meal the headlines, sport, weather and leave. Imagine profiling your visitor and making available compelling content which enriches their lives and advertisers which could align their customers’ profiles. Crazy huh?
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Sponsorship of Content vs End User Paying only works where the amount the end user pays is wothwhile. 99.5% of what we consume online we can not see a value in paying for.
So the sponsorship model is the only viable way to go.
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Great idea! Better yet, Google should remove every instance, then charge him to come back on Google. The stupid, greedy, , ass.
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Almost a decade and we’re still waiting. Hurry up Murdoch, deindexing your news service is the one contribution you can still make to fixing the mess your attrocious newspapers and Fox News service have created, short of closing the whole thing, and spending your money on the worlds largest cannon and shooting yrself into the sun,.
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