Hows that for a title.  Just thought it would be a fun day to rehash some old posts that made me look a little prescient

Today the feds arrested 2 programmers that worked for Madoff. I wrote this in January:

Jan 18th 2009 10:11AM

Im taking a flyer here, but if they were to put me on the case, the first people I would talk to are the software developers.  Somewhere along the line there was a software program written or modified that allowed Madoff to enter the numbers he made up, who they were paying out cash to and would print the checks and  statements.  Its very unlikely that it was off the shelf software because it would be impossible for all the numbers to balance, or he would need to use suspense type of accounts that would raise red flags for even the smallest of accounting firms.

Maybe I have missed it, but I have yet to see an article written or any commentary about the software Madoff Investments used or read about any programmers that have come forward that worked for him. Someone had to outline the details of what they wanted the software to do, and in a scam of this size, could it be anyone but Madoff himself ? Someone had to take that information and either create or modify software to keep the whole mess running smoothly for him.

Find the programmers who wrote the software and you will find out how the whole thing worked.

And as the Google, Murdoch discussions continue, some people have actually started to recognize there might be something to what I wrote in May of 08

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won’t know till we know.

But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?

It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn’t it ?

How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?

Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?

A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?

The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?

Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.

And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo’s or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.

On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.

IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.

The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?

Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?

Sure would be interesting to find out.

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Im going to simplify this as much as possible. I probably should have just included this in the first post. Here are the best and worst cases of Newscorp opting out of the Google Index

1. Best Case: They opt out and see an increase in revenues and commitment to their sites because people choose to go directly to their sites. For those sites behind a paywall, they generate more revenue than when the site was free.   Other sites notice their success and copy Newscorp, choosing to opt out of the Google index. The opt out choice turns out to be the better business move for any and all sites looking to increase revenues. Google’s position as the leading search engine is called into question.  The Search business becomes competitive again. Content companies now understand how to best monetize their content efforts.

Far fetched ? Maybe. But not totally inconceivable.

2. Worst Case: They opt out of Google’s Index. Their traffic drops 99pct. No one buys their pay offerings. They all feel like idiots. Then the last idiot left in the office gets out the text editor and changes the robots.txt file or completely deletes it.  They turn off the paywalls. Make the content free again.  Life as they knew it before they opted out and started charging for content returns to normal as quickly as Google can reindex the Newscorp sites.

The upside of Option 1 is far more impactful than the downside is bad. There is no reason not to take the chance.

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Rupert Murdoch has said that his Newscorp sites are going to block Google indexes.  Of course, all the netizens freak out when this happens. Which I love.

I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place.  First a little enlightenment for all of you that think Murdoch is making a mistake. This is not 1999, nor is it 2004, nor is it 2006, nor is it 2008.  The calendar is about to turn to 2010.  What worked and made sense 3,5 and 10 years ago, no longer does.

What has changed  ? Quite a bit, but lets start with this.  TWITTER IS SURPASSING  GOOGLE as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news  of all types. Whats more,   TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make.  Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy. The same concept applies to Facebook Links. Twitter and Facebook are not news  destinations that can compete with traditional news sources.  Google is.   Rupert loves him some twitter. Google, not so much.

Not only are Twitter and Facebook becoming strong competitors for referrals to news sources from topical searches, they both have one HUGE HUGE HUGE advantage for news outlets that Google does not:

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not.  In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any  brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.  The concept  of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day.  If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow.

Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.

Twitter and Facebook have become the ultimate real time programming guides.  Look at it like this. “Hear about bubble boy from a follow”. If: “its a news source, go to that news source” If not: “Look it up on twitter (or i use icerocket.com it shows tweeter authority) to see if there are any 1st hand accouts or check my FB wall to see what my friends have to say,  if anything”  “See tweets/posts to determine how I want to get more information:  from  TV ( stream, regular, phone), or from online written or audio source” if online: “go to that source from link in twitter or facebook”

All of the above complements everything Rupert and Newscorp are doing.   Google is no where to be found in that equation.

Thats not to say Twitter is perfect. Its not. It has  a HUGE and growing problem with spam (unlike Facebook updates and another reason why I pimp Icerocket.com). Nor am I saying that Google is toast and has no role. Non real time feed users will continue to source news through Google.  I just see that as a declining number in an era where much of our first crack at news is via our phone.  But, perfect or not, the bottom line is that in this new era of twitter, things have changed.

News sites blocking Google ain’t what it used to be.  Rupert is right. Deal with it.

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Just read a great article at the Neiman Journalism Lab site about Google’s plans to help the content industry.  In a nutshell the concept is to utilize Google’s Checkout, their payment system, to enable publishers of news and other premium content to both sell their content as part of subscriptions and/or via micropayments.  What caught my interest was the concept of allowing multiple publishers to work together to offer subscriptions or premium content together.

Could Google convince Newscorp and say the New York Times Company to work together to offer a “super subscription” to their publications online and then divvy up the proceeds on a pre agreed basis, much as they do with advertisers and site publishers ?

Maybe.

It would take a lot of work and a lot of convincing and negotiating to get it right.  Then , even if  you could get these cats and dogs to finally live in harmony , the question would arise as to whether or not Google Checkout has enough users.  RIght now they don’t. Which would mean most users would have to sign up for CheckOut.  Would people go through the process of signing up for Google Checkout in order to participate in these “SuperPublication Subscriptions” ? .

I dont think they would. In fact, while its a great idea on Google’s part, I think Google Checkout has more to gain than the publishers.

That said, this same approach could be a digital media nirvana to Amazon and its users.

Amazon has pretty much everyone’s credit card.  They have a growing user base for Kindle.They already sell digital video downloads and rentals, as well as music.  They even sell good old fashion magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

They have the ability to create  the path of least resistance for users to purchase and consume digital media.

I thought it was a good idea for media conglomerates to package all their digital assets into subscription offers.  Its a far better idea for a marketer like Amazon to package cross company offerings into bigger and better packages.

While their Kindle revenue shares , IMHO, are far too beneficial to Amazon, if they can work out a fairer revenue share for Kindle distribution, things could start to get very interesting.

Across all the digital assets that Amazon sells, the packaging and marketing options are endless.

Like the freemium approach ? ,Package the USA Today, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Investors Business Daily into a single price subscription for Kindle Delivery.  Price it a big discount for the first 3o days, with an automatic expansion to full subscriptions at a price that is a discount to their individual subscriptions. With Free Website Access included.

Want to make the bundle more attractive ? Bundle in a movie download. A book delivered to Kindle. Music. Software.

When they come up with even better ideas, Im sure the Publishers, Movie Distributors, Music Distributors, Software Vendors  will be more than happy to give you OEM prices if you commit to minimum quantities.

In fact, it could be even more interesting if Amazon took a page from Google and allowed Marketers to bid on digital content to include in subscriptions, product bundles or one off sales and then market and resell them.

Think of the ecosystem of content sales that could be created if Amazon (or EBay or Google) created a “wholesale” market for content where marketers could bid on 100 annual Wall Street Journal Subscriptions , 100 Downloads of the movie Wall Street, and 100 copies of the book “Random Walk Down Wall Street” to be sold as “Graduation Gifts for Business Majors”

Lame example, but you get the point.

In a world where the marginal cost of delivery of digital content is almost zero, why not throw it out there to be bid on so that great marketers can come up with great marketing and sales programs ?

Why not take those marketing and sales programs and offer them for sale right on Amazon ? They already have a wholesale sales program that  leverages their marketing, order processing and  physical fulfillment advantage for 3rd parties. Why not create the same type of program specifically for digital media and the same Amazon advantages, as well as  their cloud services to let anyone who wants to participate quickly create a digital media store?  This could be the ultimate market for digital media.

Its hard to find ways to sell content, particularly content in any one silo, be it news, sports, business, etc. When you start looking at how to package any  digital content into products and letting the market help set pricing, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Ebay allowed products to be aggregated and sold by anyone. Google allowed anyone to quickly and easy buy advertising and reach a huge audience.  Both based on an auction system. An Amazon Media Market could create a bourse  that leveraged the vast amounts of creativity out there to  find new ways and models to sell digital media.

It certainly could not make things any worse…

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I have a google alert that searches for mentions of the term “prosecutorial misconduct” . It’s a never ending flow of events, which is unfortunate in and of itself.  Its a reminder that power corrupts on a daily basis. This morning’s email brought my attention to an article written by Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf.

The title of his article ? “Did The Supreme Court Recognize an Innocent Person’s Right Not to be Executed ?“

When I read the title, I thought it was a trick question of some sort.  When I read the article I got sick to my stomach. In particular notice the bold paragraph.

“Twenty years ago, off-duty police officer Mark McPhail was shot and killed in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Based on information provided by Sylvester Coles, the police sought Troy Davis for the murder. Davis turned himself in and was charged with the crime. He was found guilty and sentenced to death based on the testimony of eyewitnesses.

Since then, however, nearly all of those witnesses have recanted, claiming in affidavits that they were pressured by police to name Davis as the perpetrator. Meanwhile, additional evidence has been found indicating that Coles, the prosecution’s star witness against Davis, was the actual killer. Yet despite national and international attention–including pleas by former Georgia Governor and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Georgia Republican Congressman and federal prosecutor Bob Barr, and even Pope Benedict–neither the Georgia courts nor the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board has seen fit to stop Davis’s execution.

Last week, the Supreme Court offered Davis a ray of hope. In response to his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, the Justices ordered that a federal district court in Georgia “should receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis's] innocence.”

The Court’s order in Davis was not unanimous, however. Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, dissented. Justice Scalia said that even if the district court were to find Davis to be innocent, there would still be nothing unlawful about executing him.“

The article then goes on to discuss the various legal issues involved in this issue.

I come back to a single issue. Its not illegal to execute an innocent person. Maybe its time for a constitutional amendment ?

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The internet has been dead and boring for a while now.  It has reached a point of stability where flashes  of technological creativity are rare, but  every now and then some new technology can put a spark back in the ole gal (no sexism intended).

If you haven’t heard of WebHooks or PubSubHubBub its about time you did. Both are designed to  simplify and optimize the web.

Webhooks let applications talk to each other using very simple HTTP. Webhook enabled applications run (so far) on app hosting sites in the cloud.  What makes them different is that they constantly scan  for POSTS to a designated URL.   To use the application, you register your application with the other webhook enabled application and provide  a callback URL.  You POST   data from your app to the url of the receiving app, and monitor the callback URL for its response. Your app then takes the POST it received and processes it.

I will give you a simple example. Your accountant sets up an app for all their customers that has all the sales tax rules for every community in every state.  Every time your company makes a sale, your oline store application sends the transaction ID, amount of taxable goods and the long zip code where the sale was made.  The webhooks enabled  app receives it, calculates the correct salestax  and immediately sends back the result to your online store which  incorporates  the local sales tax information it received in the invoice as the customer checks out.

This is a very simple example of using Webhooks, you will be able to come up with much better.

Pubsubhubbub (PSHB) is a realtime, multicasting webhooks enabled  publish and subscribe system.  Historically on the net, most information is received after it is pulled.  For example, we set up receive intervals for our email. Our browsers update our RSS feeds at pre determined intervals. We repeat the same searches over and over, just looking to see if there is anything new. Even when we get alerts for new email or information, the alerts are generated by actively polling the source. PSHB changes that.

The PSHB hubs are cloud based distribution centers.  Publishers choose to distribute their data through any number of publicly availabe hubs.  Subscribers choose to receive their “subscriptions” or data through the Hub. The beauty of the hub and why this makes sense is  because the HUB multicasts the data to each publishers’ subscribers, is easily scalable  and it distributes to subscribers in realtime. Every time a publisher has something new it can post the data to the PSHB, which knows who that publishers’ subscribers are and immediately multicasts the new data to all the subscribers. In real time.

The implications and opportunities to change business on the web, and actually to any device that can subscribe to the HUBs are huge.

This could be an open door for the content business. For instance, currently aggregators have to get their news the old fashioned way, through RSS feeds and news alerts that they retrieve throughout the day. That is not realtime news.  Using The Associated Press as an example, AP could post their stories to a HUB. In realtime, the HUB can update member websites so that they will always have information first, before any aggregator.   It may not take long for aggregators to recognize the new data on the member sites, but they won’t have it first.

The New York Times could do the same thing. Subscribers could get everything first, in realtime. Then after some delay which might be 1 minute, it might be 30 minutes depending on what the paper thinks is the value related to timeliness, it could post on the website and on twitter and facebook as updates. Would NY Times online readers pay $1 a month to be guaranteed that they get their news first, before anyone else ? I dont know.

In the sports world, text based play by play websites could be updated in realtime rather than pulling every 30 seconds or requiring the user to hit refresh every few seconds.

Huge databases can talk to huge databases and exchange data more efficiently, hopefully increasing the value of the information. Medical databases, crime databases, any database hosted by different organizations could use webhooks and HUBS to agree to keep each other up to date.

This is all JUST beginning. Its all brand spanking new.  Already  extensions like Superfeedr are starting to appear, designed to scale.

Dive in and take advantage of the opportunity, ignore it at your own peril

m

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Has anyone else noticed the irony that Redbox, a company that rents DVDs for a dollar from a kiosk that people have to drive to, is the most disruptive force in the video business ?

Or the irony that the most successful video delivery business, Netflix, makes almost all of their money shipping DVDs in red envelopes from distribution centers across the country ?

Or that even with the dominance of Apple’s Itunes, they only account for about 1/3 of music sales, in an industry that is becoming less dependent on music sales.

I’m not suggesting anyone run out and start a video sales and rental store, or open up a record store. But then again, I never would have agreed that opening up kiosks in 7-11s and Grocery Stores to rent DVDs for a dollar would be a good idea either.

On the flipside, conventional wisdom says that the most disruptive and dominant force in video is youtube.com . In reality, they are just a very large online media company doing business in the most old fashioned of means. They license and aggregate content and then sell advertisers their viewers. They are big, which by definition makes them a force. However, there is absolutely nothing disruptive about what they do. They are no different than Broadcast Networkz on Television.

They  have the same problem as Networks like NBC, ABC, CBS.

At some point, when online video consumption reaches 100pct penetration, like Broadcast TV before it, Youtube will have to find a way to license hit shows so that they can build  or just retain viewership. With advertising as their single revenue stream (as opposed to subscription revenue like cable networks have ), they may find themselves once again being subsidized by Google just a few short years  after they reach the profitability they covet.

The sweet irony in comparing Google/Youtube to Broadcast Network TV, is that despite being online, Google has no idea who their viewers are any more than NBC, CBS, ABC do. Could Facebook Connect be in Google’s future ?

The point is that when everyone is looking in one direction, sometimes industry change and profits can come from where everyone is telling you not to look

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Great catch from the folks over at TechCrunch. In their post “What the hell happened to the free version of Google Apps” ,   they take note that Google is doing everything possible to channel new users of Google Apps to the paid version.  This apparent shift in Google strategy regarding free raises some interesting questions:

1. Google is building a significant reseller channel.  The channel is responsible for selling into corporate accounts.  Obviously resellers of Google products don’t want to compete with free from Google. Which raises the question, “What is the better platform for selling into corporations, the web or direct sales ?”. 

2. Is Google now following the MicroSoft lead ?   It may well be that we have seen a bifurcation of the free model between corporate and consumer sales.  Free has its place with consumers, but where does it work and prevail with corporations ?  MicroSoft has long been a proponent of online products being free for consumers, but charge the hell out of corporations every chance you get.   Google tried to fight this model for a long time, merely dipping its toe into selling into corporations.  Are they now pulling an about face ?

3.  Has Google realized that at least in the corporate market (B2B), if you live by free, you die by free ? That the rising expectations of support and product enhancements by corporations never end and are expensive to live up to ?

Are there examples of companies who have been able to survive with an exclusively free model in the B2B space ?

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The problem with companies who have built their business around free is that it is far from free to remain successful.

The more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. The more success you have, the more important it is to management to remain successful.  The more important remaining successful is to management, the more money they will spend, the more chances they will take, the more infrastructure they will build, the more people they will hire.  All of the things that will prevent them from staying lean , mean and flexible. All of the things that distract them from innovating within their core competency.

Lets look at the rule that eventually KILLS all freemium based content plays:

There will always be a company that replaces you. At some point your BlackSwan competitor will appear and they will kick  your ass. Their product will be better or more interesting or just better marketed than yours, and it also will be free.  They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo.  You get the point.  Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience. Or will be differentiated enough, and important enough to the audience to maybe even charge more. Who knows. But they will kick your ass and you will be in trouble.

For Google, who lives and dies by free, we dont know who their BlackSwan company will be. But we all know it will happen don’t we ? The only question is when. Of course Google knows it as well. Which is exactly why they invest in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future.  They are spending incredible amounts of money in search of the “next big Google thing”.  When their BlackSwan competitor appears, they won’t be in a position to compete with the newly presented model, particularly if its free based because their ecosystem has bloated to the point where they can no longer create anything for free.

Google is not unique. The same happens to all companies based on free.

The same will happen to Facebook, Twitter, pick any company who lives off of free.

Its not that they can’t make money offering free. They can , have and will. The problem is that they know that its literally  impossible  to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

Their better choice would be to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank.  More importantly, when you see your BlackSwan company appear and you know they will kick your ass, rather than ramping up to try to compete, get out. Sell. Or maximize cash and pay your shareholders every penny you have.

Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don’t fight it. Admit it.  Profit from it.

Which is exactly what MySpace should do.  Rather than trying to reinvent itself to compete better with Facebook, they should do the exact opposite. They should try to optimize whatever monetization opportunities it has. Cut costs to the bone. Maximize revenue per user. Think purely in terms of business.  Squeeze every nickel out of it that they possibly can, knowing its going to die a long, slow death.  Meanwhile, they have the opportunity to take that money and invest it where they think some young company is preparing to become Google/Facebook/Whoever’s black swan.  They can invest alone, or along side others. It doesnt matter.  What does matter is recognizing that they have a better chance of beating Facebook by investing in a company they think can pre empt Facebook than by trying to reconfigure MySpace to be that company.

When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free. Your best bet is to recognize where you are in your company’s lifecycle and maximize your profits rather than try to extend your stay at the top.

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With the publication of Chris Anderson’s new book Free, the discussion about the role of free, today and in the future has expanded.  Articles from Malcom Gladwell in New Yorker, and Seth Godin discuss the various merits and challenges of Free.  Is Free inevitable ? Is Free the beginning of the end ? Let me answer the question.

First of all, what we are experiencing right now is “Better Than Free”. The videos on Youtube, magazine articles, newspapers reports, anything that used to be analog that now is digital have a perceived value that is based on their legacy delivery.  We value all those TV shows on Hulu highly because we assign a value to what we pay for cable or satellite. We assign a high perceived value to newspaper and magazine reports based on the years we spent paying for them.  Anything that we paid for as recently as last year, that we now get free, of course we assign a  value of more than free.  That makes it worth the effort to find it for free. Because the effort is worth your time. You are getting something for nothing, who doesnt want that ?

Of course that is a challenge for those industries. Not only do they face the challenge of their former customers wanting  their content for nothing, but they have the problem that their costs are based upon their ability to sell their content.

There in lies the problem for the free movement. The subsidies of pro content producers from the newspaper and magazine industries will disappear as those businesses contract significantly. What happens then ?

You get the music industry.  Anyone can create any song for no cost, and they do.  The problem of course is getting your music to stand out among the millions of songs available at any given moment. Its expensive. Very, very expensive.  (If it werent for groupies, would the number of musical artists contract 90pct ?  )

The future of content outside of the music industry is exactly what you are now seeing inside the music industry.  The music industry  uses what they have learned from more than 10 years of competing with free.  First they cut the size of their organizations to the bone, keeping just those they hope and pray will know best how to guide them through the world of free.

Those survivors have learned or are learning how to identify the music and artists that best fit the new world of free.  They learn how to work with the artists and those willing to pay for music in some form, whether CD, Download, Licensing or in concert, and do their best to maximize the return on their investment.  They use free as a weapon. They use free as an asset. They use it anywhere they can leverage it into something more. Something hopefully profitable.

What they music industry realizes that they  have to offer quite a bit of music for free. What they have learned however, is that they dont have to allow it to be freely distributed. They can and do control where its delivered. You can have it for free, if thats how you want it, but you have to come get it where we want you to get it. On our websites. On websites we co produce with Youtube or Hulu or whoever. If you want it for free, you have to go through the exhausting effort of clicking to our website and giving us something in value in return. It may be your attention. It may be your interest. It may be a referral or your email address. We give you something free, you give us something that costs you nothing.

The music is often free, but it is NEVER freely distributed.

The TV and Movie business are realizing this is the case. Hence TV Anywhere. They will give you access to content for free if you are already a customer of their distributors. And before you IT ALL HAS TO BE FREE BIGOTS EXPLODE, even google requires you have internet access of some kind, which costs you in subscription fees , taxes or coffee.

Newspapers are catching flack for saying there should be copyrights on their news reports and the summaries. They are right. Their work, their ability to control it. They should have the right to control where it appears. If, as Chris Anderson and others suggest, there will be plenty of content creators and the quality of the work is sufficient for consumers of that content, then there will be plenty of open source content and it shouldnt matter what the newspapers request for protection. The market will decide.

Newspapers are also catching flack for saying they dont want their content openly distributed. On this point, they are correct again. They should have complete control over where it is distributed. They should have the ability to choose where it is offered for free.

Not only should they have this control, taking back this control is the exact right business move. Im not saying it will save newspapers or magazines, it wont. But it will make their website offerings stronger in the long run. If Im them, I take the risk that the “printed” content business follows the path of the music industry.

In other words, you take on the role of identifying the best in breed for your business and use your resources to help those talented people figure out how to make money for themselves and for you.  You provide your resources and knowledge to make them smarter and then you go and compete against the masses.

In the long run, printed content producers should have a brand, and use their institutional knowledge, their core competencies and ability to procure, improve and market to maximize the value of their brands and the perceived value of their content. Whether its on a central website, a co produced website, in print or on a hologram in the evening sky, I should go to the NY Times because they have demonstrated to me that they have the very best articles on the subjects I am looking for. That they are the best source for breaking news about the topics I care about. THEY NEED TO MAKE SURE I DONT HAVE THE CHOICE OF GETTING IT ANYWHERE ELSE BUT WHERE THEY DICTATE.  If they cant make their content stand out from the open source masses and convince enough people to transact with them in  a way that makes them money they dont deserve to exist.

They should  distribute their content for Free where they believe it maximizes return, but should do everything possible to keep it from being distributed Freely.

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