The Web is for Selling Things and Stuff. Not Communities.
March 21st, 2008 | by Brad King |There’s a lot of talk these days about community building, platforms for social networks and business/customer relationships.
These three seem to be the Holy Grail for newspapers. Tap into communities, give them tools to talk with each other and monetize the outcome. It’s great in theory. It’s absolutely wrong in practice.
You don’t sell communities. They are, by and large, worth commodities in terms of dollars, although absolutely essential when it comes to maintaining and building your organization. But you can’t confuse one with the other. They are not interchangeable (as many newspapers believe their copy edit and design staffs are).
At the end of the day, you can only sell one thing: content.
When you look at the companies making money online, they are by and large selling their core business to their customers across different platforms.
It’s March, so let’s talk a little Madness. CBS is slated to make $23 million by giving viewers free access to every game during the college basketball tournament. That’s a pittance compared to its $545 million overall advertising haul; yet, still not a bad chunk of found money.
They are streaming these games across 200 websites, which means they aren’t even making people watch the game at their site. They’ve opened up access to their content. They’ve syndicated it for free(-ish).
The point is that they aren’t trying to sell their community. They are selling their core commodity: content. They are just selling that content across multiple platforms.
Newspapers need to look at their business models in the same way. You collect data. You write stories. You should allow your communities to develop by providing them tools to collaborate and contribute. And, you should allow them to push you. To jostle you. To challenge you. Let that groundswell build.
There are two “fer shers” in this history of technology: software engineers build tools to allow other people to use the Web (”tools to make tools” as Levy put it in Hackers) and most innovations are happenstances of accident.
If you build it right (re: open), they will come. That’s what happens.
Then, you’ll have new platforms to sell your commodities: data and content.
But you can’t control how that platform will develop. You have to leave it free and open. You need to look at ways to use technology to deliver and sell what you do in any medium people want it. Don’t arbitrarily make up a new business model.
Do what you do.
