Free vs. paid content, Anderson vs. Gladwell

A soon-to-be-released book by Wired editor Chris Anderson will spark intense new debate about the value of content in an abundance model versus a scarcity model – pouring gasoline on the already white-hot media industry discussion of how much readers should pay for content creation.

Days before its release, Free: The Future of a Radical Price is already super-charging the debate in the form of a long-distance debate between Anderson and The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell. For fans of The Long Tail and The Tipping Point – two groundbreaking books by the respective authors – it’s a debate not to be missed.

In a nutshell, Anderson sees the whole world going free due to digital technology, and Gladwell doesn’t. Anderson paints the very-near-future as black-and-white, while Gladwell suggests everything isn’t moving toward a free model which he points out is not a ...[more]

Paid content and 4 principles governing its true value

How to get consumers to pay for content creation is a central tenet of most media companies today – in print, online, and via mobile.

It manifests itself in three practical ways these days:

How to increase circulation prices of the print newspaper.

How to create an online payment scheme for consumers.

How to derive revenue from mobile phone users, either via the web or text messaging services.

The question is not "if" consumers should pay more, but "when" we can get the technology right to make them pay more. We've decided as an industry that the content we create has high value, and someone has to pay the bills.

Yet we're missing some core principles in this discussion:

1. Content's pure value is declining due to the exponential explosion of user-generated content.

2. All content is not created equally.

3. Not all platform experiences are the same.

4. Content's value is no longer ...[more]

Schibsted’s hidden asset: multiple cultures for its media properties

For those analysts and pundits passing judgment on today’s newspaper industry, one of the big strikes against us is a belief that our internal culture is not transferable to the Digital Age.

Most media companies operate singularly when it comes to culture, and that is often their Achilles Heel. Usually, there is a dominant culture – entrepreneurialism, mindless template execution, conservatism, risk-aversion, top-down, Balkanized – that is prevalent at the business unit level. There is usually either a tight connection to a corporate office or a loose connection to a corporate office.

I visited the venerable media company Schibsted in Oslo, Norway, recently. As you know, Schibsted is one of the most progressive newsmedia companies in the world. With operations centered mostly in Europe, the 170-year-old Schibsted has a presence in the newspaper, television, film, online, mobile, book, and magazine industries. The company generates nearly US$2.1 billion in revenue.

The visit yielded an unexpected finding for ...[more]

Finn remakes classifieds in Norway unburdened by cultural baggage

I meant no disrespect to Frode Nordseth, but his story was freaking me out.

As chief operating officer of Norway's Finn (www.Finn.no), he weaved in and out of anecdotes, data points, and PowerPoint slides to explain a “newspaper killer owned by newspapers” – perhaps the best story in the Schibsted stable of properties.

In short, Finn is Norway's leading classified advertising portal. It was founded in 1996 by five non-competing regional dailies precisely to cannibalise their print classifieds. The newspaper executives a decade ago believed it was inevitable that someone would create a better digital mousetrap for classifieds. They were correct, they were set up as competitors to their own properties, and they turned out to be the cannibals.

Finn – which means “to find” in Norwegian – today is the leader in verticals such as real estate, cars, ...[more]