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Free Web Content a "Myth," Claims Barry Diller
BotScout writes "Following in the footsteps of other traditional media executives who just don't get it, Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, and that's that. The media and technology executive said it's 'mythology' to view the Internet as a system of free communications. 'It is not free, and is not going to be,' Diller said yesterday at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California. Companies from Disney to New York Times Co. are seeking ways to extract revenue from the Internet. The latter recently said that it's considering a $5 monthly fee for access to its namesake newspaper's web site."
As open source site slashdot it, I'd like to ask the question that why is it such a big deal if some companies like to charge for users to access their content? This is same everywhere else, from movies to games and music. What makes content on internet different?
You pay for what you get. If you dont like to pay for it, you go elsewhere and dont get their content. Anyone who thinks its important or good enough can pay the low price for it.
This is why I pay for services like spotify and fileplanet. I think they give me good return on the (low amount) I pay them. Hell, people pay for slashdot to see articles before everyone else because it gives them some return they like. Its exactly the same thing here.
They aren't trying to get paid for *internet access*. They're trying to get paid from people reading their own made content. There's no problem in that.
This asshole can't see the forest for the trees. For every 'paid' content producer out there, there's a thousand people putting out far more content for nothing. Even more significant: paying for content doesn't seem to improve its quality or availability.
He knows it, we know it and the average guy knows it too. So why is he spouting this diatribe? Is there some sort of club for jackoffs who like to talk fucking lies, with the score keeper counting how many similar jackoffs rally to the call? He's a shill and nothing more. It should come as no surprise that he helped found Fox, an organisation that specialises in feeding subtle disinformation.
I say let the big companies lock out their content. It just helps smaller content producers find their niche and make some money through sponsorships and advertisements.
Barry Diller stated today that "the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don't make enough money from it. We have to educate people that free doesn't work, particularly for us."
Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls. "Without content companies, there would be nothing on the internet! Just as without pimps, sex would never have been invented."
Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. "How can we hold governments' feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?" Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.
Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its "fair share" for so parasitically leading people to newspapers' websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. "We feel this is completely unfair," said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, "as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss." Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Here's what I have to say to those who want to charge $5 to read their "online" newspaper. Good luck with that. I'll be over here where the news is still "free".
Well, perhaps not *your* content, but i guarantee the content down the street will be.
Guess where ill be taking my business? ( thinking ad revenue here as business )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What we are debating is the cost-per-eyeball to deliver content to readers. The web is way cheaper than any other network ever set up. One nice website serves millions, or billions. Compare to the cost of a TV broadcast network.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Barry misunderstands the BASIC transaction basis of currently-free media (like TV): the ADVERTISERS are his customers, the VIEWERS EYES AND ATTENTION is what he's selling and the 'content' is merely bait to attract and hold the viewers for as long as possible.
So in a sense, he's stating categorically that fish are going to need to pay to enjoy the worms hanging on those hooks.
It's quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
And, for what it's worth? "Disney, the world's biggest media company, is developing a subscription-based product for the Internet, Iger said..." Disney: really good content producer, really BAD at predicting how they can exploit the viewers. I recall them saying categorically that Disney movies would NEVER be released in DVD format (for fear of piracy) and then they did release in a dvd format...DIVX. Everyone remember what a huge success that was?
No, if Disney's working on a 'subscription' internet, I'm going to bet strongly that they'll be wrong.
-Styopa
I imagine that if these sites start trying to charge their users for access, most people will just lose interest and look for a site that doesn't suck. For example, I like to browse slashdot and youtube, but if they started charging for basic access I'd forget about both in a heartbeat.
Ya, i pay access fee each month, to a company that is either part of or in bed with major media giants that are working hard to limit my access in general. And you want to raise my rates even more in effect? Well, f-you sir.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Any person or business can charge for access to their site if they want to. Others may choose to give information away free. Still others might give information away free, but include ads from sponsors on their sites. Some individuals might choose to directly exchange information, either for free or in exchange for value.
Regardless, no one is forced to use any particular website - if one chooses, and another provides the same information free, you can choose either one. If the one charging has unique information that no one else offers, you can decide whether to pay and get it, or not. If you have information you'd like to charge for, but there are a dozen other sites offering it free, you probably aren't going to do well. It would be wrong for you to try to get laws or regulations to block the ones giving it away for free.
This essay is a bit dated with some of its references, but the underlying concepts still apply:
http://www.worldofends.com/
The only reason it grew was because it was (is still) free.
I registered there years ago, but it's been years since I've logged in. First off, the stories are mostly knock-off crap for the 'unwashed masses', secondly how do you know their columnists aren't just poorly-paid liars like that clown Jason Blair? You can read better elsewhere, and if they do publish something factual you'd want to verify it anyway.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
Free content means free for the consumer.
Even the Guild, which is free to the consumer, is supported by a corporate sponsor who wants to draw in those who like it.
so, Barry Diller is a dipshit. He might as well wipe his ass with his MBA, since he can't figure anything else out.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I do not have a problem with his company trying to charge money for content. I have a problem, though, when he tries to create a cartel of companies so every newspaper publisher moves to a subscription-based model.
I have a problem with that because it is not legal in USA or the UE, not because it is going to work. On the contrary, it is not going to work. At all.
Nothing new here - "Diller predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions."
fuck him and his company, (we) have spent thousands of hours removing his companies shit from our network
they target kids especially
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/ask-toolbars/
http://www.google.com/search?q=iac+spyware
...Multi-Millionaire CEO's of International corps know EXACTLY what the little guy scraping by on minimum wage actually wants and needs...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
I used to have a delivery subscription for ~$5/wk but I canceled it a while ago because it was nothing but extra clutter. When I canceled, I told the rep that I still greatly value the paper's content and would not mind continuing to pay some small amount to keep it going but, alas, they were incapable of taking my money without sending paper to my doorstep.
$5/month seems eminently reasonable, I hope they do something like that.
My Bittorrent client says otherwise.
But if you want to get paid for online content, create content that is worth paying for. And keep in mind that you're competing for an audience that is easily amused by home videos of dad's getting hit in the family jewels by wiffle bat wielding young'uns.
FAQs are evil.
I, for one, welcome the end of 'free' internet traffic, as I am sick of those spongers getting something for nothing. I look forward to getting paid for storing cookies, looking at adverts, filling in forms etc.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Didn't we already hear this about 15 years ago or so?
Maybe if they concentrate really hard for another 15 years then wishful thinking might pop open an alternate reality or something.
Tap your heels together and make yourself less relevant.
Than to be getting all my news through Google and the likes who need to fill the page with advertising and do all sorts of data-mining to make their venture worthwhile. If paying a small amount would replace all advertisement and data-mining I'd be happy with that.
There is a certain limit to how much content can be supported by advertising, after that advertising becomes increasingly pervasive in order to keep up the same revenue stream and after that advertising alone won't bring in enough revenue to keep some businesses afloat. These businesses might be the ones that spend a lot on procuring high-quality content and will either be forced to join the sea of other copy-cat news sites that re-write other articles and use twitter as a primary source.
The way I see it there is a trend towards ad-based stuff and then back to subscription before the ad-based services pick up again. There is only so much money being spent on web-based advertising and it has to be split among all the people who provide ad-based services, so as soon as the revenue drops to the required amount to keep these people in business a lot of them will fold, increasing the revenue for those who made it through the bubble so the cycle can start all over again
Barry Diller's view of reality is a myth. People already pay for internet access they generally will not pay more to hit websites. Some will remain free and those will thrive and the losers will either go out of business or they will return to free, possibly too late to survive.
... because these companies have our attention for whatever period of time we stare at the content they put onto their website.
They seem to be under the misapprehension that our attention is free.
Companies have already discovered that too many people are willing to provide information for free to charge for it online.
With very few exceptions (professional journals and professional necessities like Lexis Nexis), sites who force users to pay for their content condemn themselves to irrelevancy.
Two easy examples of "Paid vs. Free" web sites:
Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia
Classmates vs. Facebook
Also, think about Experts Exchange. There were popular Firefox extensions created for the express purpose of blocking expertsexchange.com results in Google.
They now provide their answers on the bottom of every page. Good or bad, almost no one will pay for news stories online.
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
I've been building websites for all kinds of reasons for 13 years-- many of them personal, with the purpose of serving my music, art, etc. I decided recently that this website I've been cultivating lately will actually be MORE successful without any advertising-- and by successful, I mean I can use it to spread memes more effectively than with a website tainted with advertising content. you might as well use unfiltered tap water to cook a meal. Money becomes a proxy for real attachment. People think that because they paid for something that they can waste it-- so I no longer let anyone pay for my creativity. People like Barry Diller are just reinforcing a sick and broken system that cannot last.
Long live Big Fat Artifact 2112
Places like the New York Times have put no decent effort into getting their internet traffic to back out. Their whining is getting ridiculous.
The cost per click of advertising on sites like the New York Times is pretty high. But they put their CPC ads below the fold where users won't click on them. They take the easy branding dollars for the top placements on CPM media buys. The problem with this is that most media buys are cheaper than paying per click(since it requires a high initial $$$ commitment), and are capped at 1 view/person/12 hours. So by the 10th pageview for someone, you're really down the crap inventory.
This is 100% the lazy way out. They should be making a self serve platform (to eliminate the 30%+ cut Google and other PPC companies take), and they should be aggressively looking for advertisers. Start tagging articles, have people bid on the tags themselves(to break down the different topics better).
Move the ads into more aggressive slots, and start putting non intrusive text ads on their mailing list. Quantcast shows them getting 66.5-79.5 million US pageviews a month, and quantcast is pretty conservative. So let's say they put 3 PPC ads in a decent position, and take the high number(79.5 million).
It's not unreasonable to guesstimate the adblock as a whole would get around a 2-3% click through ratio with good targetting. Even at 2%,that would be 1.59 million clicks to the ads per month. The prices would vary so much based on keyword that guessing past that is pointless, but suffice it to say most would be paying $0.75 on the cheaper end, and much more expensive for things about insurance, etc. And that's just one adblock. They've got the resources to monetize this, they just aren't. They'd prefer to use safe but low revenue CPM buys, and to let Google take a big chunk of their PPC revenue. Idiots.
Before you mod me funny, think, perhaps I was insightfully funny?
Phyllis Diller made more sense than this guy.
Say hello to my little sig.
I think Diller uses many free softwares, icons, Wikipedia etc.
SZERVÃC Attila -
It is hard to imagine how clueless an "executive" in this industry can be. Apparently, Diller is incapable of visualize himself in the shoes of others.
If most sites charged a subscription fee:
1) Personally, the only commercial site I visit frequently enough to be worth a fee is the NYT. There is no second place; not even close. If all papers charged a fee, I suspect that 80% of users would subscribe to NYT and nothing else.
Other than the NYT, I probably visit 1000 other sites per month seeking interesting reading. Diller would have me pay $5000 per month for that privilege.
2) Free ranging surfing would be discouraged because of all the fee-walls erected. Most users would never discover Diller's site in the first place.
3) As others have remarked, most users would be driven to the remaining subset of sites that don't charge a fee.
4) Given that we users like to change our minds frequently about favorite places to visit, if we did pay a $5 fee to subscribe, we would likely change our mind before getting value for the money.
If there must be a subscription fee, then the ONLY way it could work would be one $5 fee for all information sites to be allocated among providers in proportion to the actual visits they record. It would be almost the same business model as cable TV which shares subscriber fees with the providers.
Online gaming sites are a different story.
There is no free lunch. When the NYT content was "free" online, it was in fact being subsidized by the Times' paying paper subscribers. And the Times' advertisers, which it had to charge more in order to generate the revenue needed to subsidize the online site. Or, if the online site was in fact funded by its own advertisements, then it was paid for by the users of whatever products were being advertised.
The "ad funded" web is just another opportunity for companies to inflate their ad budgets and pass that cost onto consumers.
Personally, I will welcome the day when individual net access gets a more sane pricing structure.
âoeWe have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience,â Iger said. âoeAnd they are willing to pay for what they perceive as value.â
For what they perceive as value.
Exactly. And as marketers, they can control that for a large part of the uncritical audience. I think there are other great points being made here, I just wanted to add that this quote jumped out at me.
They want to control those perceptions, and it starts with articles and quotes like the one referenced in this issue. Free content will always be available. People often believe that what they pay for
is superior, but I personally do not believe that this is the case.
Let them bleat.
Don't be such a naïve (OTOH, I can't believe you're actually smart should you believe you're fooling us).
I pay for content, too. Specifically to get access to online dictionaries of my native language (I'm forced to do it, because there's no gratis alternative).
But they try to justify their existence by having a lot of other exclusive content on their portal; to me this is an impossible proposition: why would I pay for their content, if I know I'll die without being able to read/see all free content on the internet?
Do you honestly believe this is only about charging for one's own content?
Well, if that's the case, I'll show it's not:
1) They want to charge you for their content, but they don't want you to get others' content -- be it free or paid. The minute knowledge can be sold, you can welcome trade barriers to be added to the currently existing political ones. You'll be dumber in order for some people to get more power.
2) They'll want to sell their content, but they will also want it to be "pirated" (i.e., illegally copied), lest other undesirable competitors would be "pirated" otherwise -- which would undermine their market penetration. Haven't you heard about this happening on the software industry for the last 30~40 years? So much for your "they just want to be paid" theory...
3) Even more than that, they'll do paid forced distribution, much like what already happens in the music industry. Just like you hear what they want you to hear, you'll know just what they want you to know (because that's what they have to sell you). "I can always compare things to free content on the internet"... are you thinking that? Because they are and they won't leave this untouched... be prepared for a flat tax to make them get your money even when you access free content.
---
Ever thought about what content is?
A] If it's a new song, or a movie or some fashion news, why shouldn't they be able to charge for it? It's just reasonable, as you said.
B] But what about a technology to save lives on poor countries? How will they pay? Or knowledge that can warrant peace if it's freely distributed? Or knowledge which could help stop environmental damage, which a country does and harms another? These things will be charged and amoral people will do it, making the world a worse place to live.
We need laws to perfectly distinguish [A] from [B].
If we allow these guys who want to charge for content the freedom to do so, we will be paying not just with our money but also with our own hard-earned freedom.
Barry Diller is a myth.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that all the websites out there started charging the eminently "reasonable" $5/month for access to content. In truth, it is likely that sites run by the likes of Barry Diller will charge decidedly more than this.
Before the economic collapse, I had a monthly books/CDs/entertainment budget of, say, $150. After the collapse, that budget is closer to $40. Assuming that I choose to spend 100% of my discretionary income on nothing but paid websites, and assuming that these will all be the cheapest, $5/month websites, that gets me eight websites, out of all the sites available on the Internet. I might as well shut down my browser and head to my library to peruse some dead trees.
I can't be the only person like this. Mark my words: the Internet will route around this damage.
"Imaginary solutions to real problems."
So I'm an anonymous coward and I'm going to disagree with nearly all the posts, so let me predict either -1 or nothing higher than a 2...
Firstly, the mistake everyone here is making is that they assume they know what the business model and therefore thee economics of Dilley's production is. I'll wager that he's crunched the numbers and the $5 he's put out there isn't just some random number.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure he's factored in less users once he starts a paid service. But maybe that's not such a bad idea. If you have a paid for service and you lose 80% of your users (random high number), so long as what the remaining 20% pay covers the bills and gives you a profit, what do you care for the other 80%? Fact of the matter is, the paid subscribers will probably see a better service because there is less load on the web infrastructure supporting the content, possibly allowing for further cost savings and profit driving.
Third, yes, there's a lot of free content out there, more each day. But how much of it is worthwhile? I was going to say probably 80% of the internet could disappear and nobody would notice, but then there would be no online porn industry ;) The point being that there's an awful lot of noise out there on the great big www. I'd be curious to see a distribution graph of the web sites with the most hits from google: do 20% get 80% of hits or is it flat?
Whilst slashdot serves its purpose, it is nothing but a vehicle for delivering access to other content, thus it has no reporters or journalists to pay. Buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal, read it from cover to cover. Or if you're in Europe, get a copy of the Financial Times (England) or similar.
So long as people with money continue to see value in purchasing something (be it news or otherwise), then people will continue to sell it. Whilst slashdot is free, that it is free is relevant becaues of the open source community that it serves first and foremonst. When someone comes up with a "free" NYT or WSJ or FT and it is first rate original content, then maybe I'll buy the "free will conquer all" story. But for now, free news on the internet is no more or less worthwhile than the free news you get with free to air television.
You appearantly don't need any special smarts to be a man in his position, drawing the income he does.
Where do I sign up to be a chairman/CEO of a large moneylaundering company like that?
Unfortunately Barry doesn't realize that the music/movie industry is a sinking ship and he should pack up his desk and swim for his life.
Oh well Barry, don't worry, the world needs ditchdiggers too.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
> "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay
> for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience," Iger said. "And they are
> willing to pay for what they perceive as value."
Yes, but what does Mr. Diller have that anyone is willing to pay for?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Shut up beeatch. you'll do exactly how the advertisers tell you to do.
Some people actually do things because they enjoy it or want others to enjoy it. There are people who do charitable acts without want of tax advantages or recognition. As someone from the BSD camps have pointed out, some people just want to make their affect on the world and would like to see their work out in the world being useful. Free web content isn't so different and all those things released out there in the creative commons and the like are evidence of people simply wishing to express themselves and to share it with others.
If I said that all content must be charged for regardless of type or quality, I'd be a nut. Yet on Slashdot we regularly have people saying that no content should be charged for, which is just as crazy.
The Internet has changed the game. There are many types of content which you used to be able to charge for that you no longer can. For example, there is almost no sports coverage you can charge for because there are 10 zillion sports fans will to provide almost as good coverage for free.
But there is plenty of content that "charity and love" have not and will not ever produced. Open source projects have produced amazing operating systems, servers, etc. - but have not yet produced a single World of Warcraft or Wii Sports. We've seen a lot of funny YouTube videos, but no one is producing the next Batman movie for free and posting it to YouTube.
I still have to pay my ISP!
The idea has been voiced in holland to start taxing internet connection to pay newspapers for being able to survive. This is along the same lines of thinking. The free content supposedly makes it impossible for newspapers to survive. To keep on the staff of reporters and overhead costs. Nonsense, obviously. A new generation of media companies will just have to find new ways to fund their activities. Advertising is a big one, but other models may work too. If you are going to charge 5$ to access your content I am sure you will lose your readers rather quickly. The idea sounds shortsighted to me.
FTA: "Diller, 67,..." is just another W.O.R.M. grasping at straws before shuffling from this mortal coil.
Also, Robert Iger's comment of "We have ample evidence both in traditional and new media that people are willing to pay for quality, to pay for choice and to pay for convenience," needs to be translated:
"We've been tellin' the rubes what to pay for for so long we *know* they won't start thinkin' on their own and see this for the bullsh*t it is."
We can only hope that this grasping, greedy paradigm dies out when they do...but I'm not optimistic.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
not because he should be, but because this is what the people in power want, and they'll keep saying it until 80% of the public believe it. Hell, look at gas prices. There's a huge glut of supply but they're still going up, just because people think they should.
The model is:
Step 1. Someone write a spyware
Step 2. Some network got infected
Step 3. Start a consulting company to consult the infected network
Step 4. Profit
Exactly if you don't want it, then don't pay for it. I'm not surprised to see Disney mentioned here though. My kids have absolutely no idea who any of the Disney characters are, If we ever go into a Disney store they are totally uninterested in anything in there, and have absolutely no desire to go to Disneyland, Why because they've never seen anything Disney because its all broadcast on a subscription only channels, unlike myself who grew up on Disney broadcast on free to air channels and wanted everything/anything Disney as a kid, my kids are unlikely to ever spend a penny on anything Disney. So do they get more from the subscription based content or are they missing a trick? We had a look at the Disney site not long back and again my kids soon wandered off to play with characters they new and recognised on the other channels. Disney is losing a generation of kids by forcing subscriptions to view their stuff. Soon there will be no way back. I'm not about to subscribe to anything Disney or any other children's content provider, as there's plenty of quality free to access kids entertainment about. Hannah Barbara, Warner Bros. cartoon network etc (all who provide their entertainment on free to air channels) will all end up getting far more out of me than Disney ever will and I don't have to pay to access their content. As for news sites, it would just be ridiculous, how hard is it to find news for free elsewhere, the first to charge will be the first to sink.
Most people are paying between 20 and 80 dollars a month to their ISPs (here in Latinamerica), media companies should figure out a way to get a share of that money.
While this guy has phrased it in the typically pompous terms of a well paid and greedy exec, ultimately free web content is absolutely a myth. Someone always has to pay, be that the advertiser, someone donating part of their wages to running a server, or even a user donation model. I realise that's fairly obvious, but seem people seem to enjoy denying that regardless. As someone who struggled for years to get regular advertising for a website I founded and sweat blood over for seven years, it kind of annoys me when people expect everything on the internet to be free. And more importantly, there's only so much advertising to go round, particularly for smaller sites covering niche interests. Ultimately, someone has to be making money in order to advertise in the first place, which is why this whole "free is the new business model" seems like such a hilarious red herring to me.
... was that you're not going to see content that is paid for through your ISP subscription. You pay the ISP for bandwidth. You pay a content provider to decide which bits are ones and zeros. He didn't rule out advertising as a means to pay for content. He didn't even rule out good-will as a means to pay (he just didn't figure in things like free open source because it's just not in his sphere of thinking).
Which of you readers of Slashdot is going to put up a popular web site and run it totally free to access and entirely devoid of content? And I don't mean some puny little personal blog page. I mean a major popular site with a million visits an hour. Unless you are already filthy rich and want to blow it on this, it ain't gonna happen. And if you do fit that category, the site still isn't free because whoever you ripped off to get rich is paying for it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They can't wrap their head around the internet, it seems. It is not a publishing medium, it's a communication network. It's strength isn't in putting up gates to information, it's the flow of information which defines the net. If you don't want to communicate with me, someone else will. There's a practically unlimited number of people who will talk to each other, not just a few business conglomerates who are generous enough to feed the masses some bits of information.
Content providers must also remember that purchasing subscriptions is a bit of a pain. Do they really expect me to keep track of 20 or 30 content subscriptions? I'm not whipping out my credit card every time I want to add a news feed to my web portal. Free may or may not be as good, but the convenience of not having to fill out yet another credit card form makes free worth it. Here, I'm an anonymous coward on slashdot because I'm just too lazy to fill out another form.
Odd that Barry Diller would say something like this considering his company owns InstantAction.com a site where people can play some pretty dammed good and high quality PC & Mac games for free in the browser (think Quake Live if you haven't visited the site yet). You do not have to pay a dime to enjoy the games if you do not want to, but if you choose to do so you can enhance your gaming options by buying micropayments to unlock various extras. Dillers IAC also owns Vimeo (a competitor to YouTube) which allows anyone to freely upload or view videos online (but does offer a premium account for high resolution video uploading). Needless to say, the "free" component of these sites (and more that IAC owns) is dammed good logic that has worked thus far in their favor to help build up these sites popularity and usage and still allows them to turn a bit of a profit too.
I think Mr Diller wins the Irony award for the day for making these comments that when his own companies are not following the same direction, since it shows that now even IAC believes that they can built a site/community and maintain its popularity without enticing people in without relying on the ultimate promotional gimmick... "FREE"
Let's look at the record of Barry Diller companies.
So you can see where Diller is coming from. His ad-based businesses have been disasters, while his transaction-charge businesses have done well. (Lending Tree had some bad years because they speculated in mortgages, instead of just brokering them.)
Media companies stagnated while their monopoly on content production and distribution was taken away as the international network of computers known as the Internet severely lowered the costs for distribution, and new technology lowered the costs for production. It no longer takes a big company, with millions in investments to produce a video, or report some news, or produce some music. Coupled with the Internet, "Local Band A" can now distrubute internationally for the same cost as distributing nationally, for the same price as distributing locally.
This new competition is something our hallowed media producers can't just bribe^H^H^H^H^H lobby into obscurity (at least not quickly or directly). While an apple to apple comparison will usually favor the big production values of old, the ease of access decides what people will look at. It doesn't matter how much you spent to produce an album, when the free competition is good enough to entertain me. Just read alertbox to see stories of how many barriers there are to getting people to register and pay for something online. Just giving it out on the front page will win out to registration, payment, login, download everytime.
Now after 15+ years of the Internet being in public homes, the media companies care about this new technology. It is no different than (to use the /. car anology rhetoric) buggy makers ignoring cars for the first 15 years they were affordable to public consumers. Instead of having the vision to embrace, and alter their offerings to compliment and utilizes a new technology, the producers want everyone who uses the technology to change their behavior. As much as people bitch about the Internet's generations sense of entitlement, it's obvious where they got it from.
My apologies, spell check is borken atm.
will they be FREE?
Just like Drug dealers, entice them in with some free stuff then start charging. Sure, some will drop out but some will stay on board and cough up the ante.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
If a group of companies, from the same industry, get together and tactically agree to impose or raise fees, isn't that collusion and/or price fixing?
I thought this was a pretty fucking good movie . . . at least well better than 10% as good as Star Trek.
"Content Providers" on the corporate side seem to have forgotten that there were years that the internet grew and prospered without their involvement. Rather than waste time and resources trying to get the internet to bend to them wouldn't resources be better spent trying to figure out how to bend to the internet and still have a business? I realize that for people like Diller and Murdoch its hard to accept being part of medium in which they have absolutely no control, even harder to deal with the idea that they can spend millions on "content" and still end up having to compete fairly evenly with some guy with a camcorder in his basement. That said, content is not free, however content can be pretty darn cheap and thats where the big guys cant compete, it has to be depressing to watch a fill production staff with millions of dollars in resources out scooped by some guy with a blog and too much time on his hands.
...says that the more buyers and sellers you have in a market, the more efficient the market becomes and the less profit can me made from said market. Assuming a completely free market, the profit margins available will always approach zero.
The internet is one of the most free markets in existence, and it's not surprising at all that many basic services will not lead you to a profit on the internet these days.
God is a 'myth', and look how much of a cash cow THAT is.
A lot of this idiocy comes from the use of the metaphor "content". If music and other artistic works were called what they are -- *expressions of human creativity -- a lot of this would go away.
It's obvious, of course, that people generally don't make objects, products, "contents" (of containers, presumably) and hand them over to others without getting paid for them.
But the idea that people will not express themselves creatively -- will not write, sing, and talk about the things that are important to them -- without getting paid for it is .. um.. less obvious*
*i.e. false
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
"Diller predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions. "
Uh-huh. And the things funded through these methods will continue to account for about 0.2% of the things people do and look at on the web.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
They aren't trying to get paid for *internet access*. They're trying to get paid from people reading their own made content. There's no problem in that.
I don't see anybody criticizing Diller for his desire to charge. I think most people simply consider him a total idiot for believing that his plans will work.
Good luck with that.
You won't get my cash even if it were $5/year.
While its going to be the minority, there would be quite a few sites that model wouldn't work with - Slashdot and Facebook/Myspace for examples.
/. is the amount of user created constructive criticism in article comments (usually anyway), which is half of the content /. offers - take away half the readership of /. and take away ~50% of those constructive comments. Would you continue visiting /. (as an individual, not "will a few thousand others leave with you") if it lost 25% of its appeal AND you had to pay? I would think most would not. So now you've lost 50% readership, and another 15% or 20% because people left due to other people leaving...
One of the main attractions of
That pay model wouldn't work with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace since people use those services because their friends are, not the shitty "news" on rap. If you use Facebook and 50% of your friends leave because of introduced fees, and you have to go back to talking/sms/email to keep in touch, how many people do you really think are going to pay for Facebook for 5 or 10 friends, when they could just have all 20 friends use email, save themselves $5 and their friends get to save $5 because now those friends don't need Facebook either. So, that leaves whoever stays and, what, a handful of people on the entire Facebook network? So again, what is the incentive for them to keep paying and stay on such a Facebook when there is no reason to do so?
It seems like the thing a lot of people in the "for pay" mindset commenting on this don't understand is executives like this want *ANY AND ALL* websites that could make a buck charging for service, should - from the NYT Online, to Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia, web-mail, etc. Early 2000 wasn't that long ago, and you probably had the free 10MiB Hotmail, Yahoo, or other free 10MiB inbox email service. You did because there's no way in hell it was worth paying for 100MiB inbox. Now imagine if they had started also charging for the basic 10MiB inbox service also - you would stop using it, because you can just as well go to any other free web-mail service. OK, so Diller's ideal world comes along and everybody in the game of providing web-mail services starts charging. Either an independent newcomer will come along and immediately make a free service that people will flock to, or people will learn to just do without. After Yahoo and most other web-mail providers become irrelevant from following Diller's ideals, that startup company will come along, see "Hmmm, they didn't do so good charging, maybe we should find a way to not have to charge users?" And remember now, in this world created by Diller's thinking, the behemoth of GMail doesn't exist (yet), or it will be created by that rising startup company...
so, same as saying T.V. and radio is free for me too, aside from the cost of the equipment. Some is supported by advertisers, some by donations, some by government, and even some partially from paid subscription (we've a classical music station locally where program guide is there main revenue) . Internet sites are the same.
In the words of that segment of the Daily Show: "Who the fuck are you?" ^^
It's funny how some nobodies with a too big ego try to state "I think it is so and so. And that's that. You now you all have to think like me. Because I say so. And because I dominate *everything*!"
And they really believe that.
While we call it "delusional reality", laugh at them, and tell them to move along. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The basic problem facing corporate content providers is that that the business model of institutions of public mind control is failing.
The market for premium content is insignificant in economic terms, to start with. This is from the Against Monopoly Blog:
Even if one includes newspaper content, the numbers are economically insignificant, and declining. The numbers for IT were shown for comparison, and they are what economists would consider economically significant.
As long as content providers could profitably continue to set the agenda, filter information, and control the distribution of concerns, there was no problem. But now their business model is failing, as the internet attempts to route around the corporate control of the mind.
Perhaps we would be better off without the giant new industry and instead rely on people spreading free information amongst each other.
What has the growth of the news industry given us? We now have 24 hour news that knows full well there is not enough news to fill 24 hours so they repeat the same stories making a mountain out of a mole hill just to fill the time and get viewers watching and Fox news-like content that tries to pass highly biased opinion as fact.
The news industry is screwing up society. We could do with some of these companies going out of business.
One more exec who just doesn't get the world changes that are happening. He's behind the times. People can now create and distribute for free because they enjoy it. They have the leisure time so they don't have to have the compensation for every little dram of effort. Creativity rules. Big Media sucks down the tubes. Viva la revolution - turn on again!
Who do you think the journalists are, congressmen?
Face it. Wikipedia only makes it into the news when some idiot reporter gets his information from it and that info turns out to be 100% pure bullshit. The "stolen" information that (against all odds) turns out to be correct is called "research," which you would know if you weren't a mouth-breathing moronic wikipedo.
The significant thing these people are missing is that there is a significant segment of people who will not consume it if they have to pay for it. Like the P2P crowd - if all free sources of RIAA music disappeared tomorrow and they could only buy it on iTunes or wherever legally, many would not buy it. That is to say, there are somethings that are valuable only because they are free. How many people download Britney Spears songs but would not be caught dead actually purchasing them?
Why does it have to be one or the other? Most people are willing to pay for really good content (cable tv, movies, music). For not so good content, most people are not willing to pay (personal youtube videos, blogs, etc). The main, really cool thing about the internet is that it allows for extremely cheap distribution of content (whether it's free or pay). So, the New York times doesn't need to have a massive printing operation for an online service. The cable company will not need to run fiber to your house just for tv (I realize you might have internet provided by your cable company...) But the point is, if you pay some internet provider, you then get access to the ability to download all content in theory. This reduced cost allows for advertising to fund many things that could not be funded by advertising previously. So, to sum it up some content will be free, some will be pay, but at least we'll all save the expense of distribution (or much of it) by having a common distribution channel for content.
No Sigs!
...not to mention the obvious hypocrisy that wikitruth evidently has no problem putting the hardcore porn pics on its pages (including ones that may have only briefy appeared on Wikipedia). What if a small child was browsing wikitruth - won't somebody think of the children?
No one pays for spam?
Don't you realize in the last 6 months, every bit of breaking news was picked up on Twitter faster than any legitimate news source? Where did I hear about MJ first? Twitter. Where did I hear about Iran? Twitter. News will continue. But historical ways of covering the news are dying.
A willingness to donate your time and money is part of being a good person, even if there's plenty of kudos to be had.
However:
So until the socialist utopia arrives, we'll have to balance the paid and pro-bono aspects of our lives.
Posts like this from execs make me laugh. People will only pay for what they receive value from. Netlfix, Tivo, things like that provide a service that is hard to get somewhere else. (MythTV and others not withstanding)...
Pay services, unless they provide something USEFUL, that you can't get anywhere else, are never going to be money makers. The internet will continue to migrate towards advertising paying for the "free" content...with special "Premium" services that people will be wiling to pay for. The internet will eventually be like cable television was. There'll be things you get with your basic subscription, and things that you pay extra for. ....and why pay for the Wall Street Journal, when you can go to any restroom, and some one has left you a free copy so that way you can do your business, just as the person who left it there did their's.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
> blogs, tweets, youtube video's, vanity sites, even professional authors/musicians/film makers
> giving away their art for free. There is no way that the content industry's can stop this on their own
In the US, anyway, there is practically no way to stop this via legislation because of the First Amendment.
They might try to make an end-run around our rights and cut deals with the ISP's. I doubt it would work, but MSM seems to control radio, so perhaps they might manage to do it with the net also. BTW, this is one of the reasons why net neutrality is a very important issue (i.e., non-discrimination based on endpoints; QoS being less important, perhaps).
In this day and age, I would have thought that you would have also already posted a link to their RSS feeds page:
http://www.csmonitor.com/rss
I live in a US West Coast urban area. I use debit/credit cards for almost all my transactions, and my paychecks are direct deposited. I rarely need to use cash anymore, so I rarely need to use ATM machines to restock my carry around cash. What little cash I do use these days I restock at getting a little cash when I buy groceries.
The biggest 10-15 newspapers will be saved by their names and history. Maybe non-profit status. Maybe they'll be bought by some entity and run as a lost leader or tax shelter.
Those news providers that aren't literally the NY Times or Washington Post themselves that try to start charging will fail.
Goes for both online and cable TV, though.
I'm thinking about pulling my cable TV. I only turn on cable news when there's a literally a disaster in progress at that moment that everybody is covering and has on (Like Katrina or the Airliner landing in the Hudson). The only other thing I watch on cable is some games and a few new movies. I won't turn on the digital cable channels anymore because of the annoying way many of the cable channels increase the sound volume so much during commercial breaks. Digital cable channels have also become unwatchable for anything more than one show because of the microtargeted repetition of the same few commercials on that channel over and over and over.
I run Ad-Block on FoxFire too. Same reasons and motivations. When the advertisers started adding strobes and day-glo colors to banner ads and pop-ups, I opted out.
I find it funny that this post is tagged "republican" when Barry Diller is a Democrat ( http://www.newsmeat.com/media_political_donations/Barry_Diller.php ). There is a strong tendency on slashdot to think that the wealthy are Republicans when in fact the areas of the U.S. with the highest average income levels are overwhelming Democrat.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
At least with TV, I can usually fast-forward past the commercials (Tivo user). But with the radio, I either have to suffer through them, or turn the radio off for 5 minutes until the commercials end.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Why would anyone pay for that leftist bullshit?