13 ms·

How Facebook and Google could disrupt the subscription model for news

61 points by nreece 10y ago

us0r 10y ago
I canceled all my subscriptions. I would happily pay 1 organization good money for subscriptions to the top 6-10 papers. I'm really surprised they haven't tried this yet.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Try Blendle[1]. Disclaimer I use their service and like it. They let you fill your "wallet" with money which doesn't expire, and then they give you access to a bunch of different newspapers on a per-story basis for a variable amount of money per story based on the newspaper. So if you were spending $20/month on a NYT subscription you can put $20/Month into your Blendle account and read the stories of interest on the Times, WSJ, Post, Economist, etc and often have money left over. They have a generous "don't like it and we'll refund your money" which is quick and simple to use (I've used this probably half a dozen times when the article turned out to be just fluff). The articles have no additional advertising, render well on mobile or desktop or tablet. I dropped my NYT and WSJ subscriptions and read them on Blendle, that has cost me significantly less than the combined subscription rates. [1] https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/
  - macintux 10y ago
    Thank you! I've long wanted some sort of micropayment system for news, this looks promising.
  - thedarkginger 10y ago
    Glad you shared. I found OP frustrating in that the core problem of digital publishing for profit doesn't seem to be the inability to price the content correctly but rather publishers' inability to deliver a product that customers would even pay for. When a Google News search reveals multiple copies of near identical stories (let's say NYT, a wire service, and a local paper using a wire service), the value proposition to a user of paying for one newspaper is generally low. Never made sense to me why the Netflix model (that Blendle seems closest to cracking right now) was never applied to accessing good journalism in one place.
- amelius 10y ago
  Another option would be that news companies build an app and sell content through the app store. I'm not in favor of this solution though, because I don't want one company to know what I read, and I don't like the idea of one company influencing what I read and I wouldn't want a near monopolist to put a tax on my news.
scep12 10y ago
The TL;DR is that a tech company with enough information about its users could charge them "dynamically" based on what it thinks they would pay for news. Should books/music/movies/tv cost more to those who can afford to pay more as well?
- vasaulys 10y ago
  An interesting business idea if not a depressing future. Doesn't Amazon do this in a way? I've seen prices for kindle books change depending on if I'm logged in or not, and not always in my favor.
- Grimes23 10y ago
  Don't companies already do this? The price for a copy of cs:go costs different amounts in each country https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/ https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  I recall reading a forum post some years ago where a few people had talked about the price of a product being different for the guy on the mac (>$) than the guy on windows. So, it's not completely unheard of I suppose.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Airlines are notorious for this. One-day return? Business traveller! Hit him! Searching flights on a Saturday afternoon? Private travel – let's discount. High-DPI display? Did someone say "discount"? I meant "this counts" – as a good reason to raise your prices.
quintin 10y ago
Related conversation from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early product manager Dave Morin: https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928 https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928
chrisabrams 10y ago
I cannot imagine such a product/feature could exist on the market. This makes Microsoft's anti-trust issues with IE look like a joke in comparison.
jsperson 10y ago
I welcome alternative business models. The current trend is destroying quality news organizations and leaving consumers wanting. Another option is the pay what you want model. This would be a lot easier to implement and would eliminate the possible backlash. This morning I investigated the WSJ. After the intro period discount expires it's about $400 a year - a lot more than it's worth to me. Instead of getting $100 or even $200 from me they get nothing. Pay by the article services like Blendle show promise, but they really need to work on the interface.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Pay-By-Article is, I believed, feared by publishers and journalists because they see how often the number of clicks and comments diverges from the perceived importance of stories. Once pay-by-article is the driving force of everything, it will be incredibly hard for these organisations to resist the urge to cheat here and there. Send a writer and a photographer to Tajikistan for two months to report on the election? For the same price, you can get 120 "analysis" pieces on the effect of social media in the presidential election. Instead, I'd be happy to see "casual" online subscriptions: I believe there's many people like me who read lots of sources at medium depth. There should be a range of the number of monthly article views (anywhere from 30 to 200 I would say) where the publication is important enough for a reader to commit to spending some money, but not important enough to warrant a full subscription. Ideally, the publishers would band together and create an actual "netflix of news" with such packages for the top-50+ publications worldwide. There must be a huge untapped market of avid news consumers currently underserved by the market. Why hasn't it happened? I can only guess that the publishers are weary of relinquishing the reader relationship to any middleman. I think we're approaching the point where they'll either have to do it themselves, or these behemoths (google, fb, Apple) will do it for them.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    This idea is great, provided they get together and support one subscription spanning numerous publications. I'd like to read some of The Economist, Harper's, Vanity Fair, etc but am not interested enough to buy a full subscription. If they don't do something like this, it might be the end of them. The internet is good in so many ways, but it also causes a lot of problems.
username223 10y ago
tl;dr -- Surveillance-based dynamic pricing for news articles., i.e. "making the world a worse place." I don't know anyone who does not loathe booking a flight, and I shudder at the millions of dollars spent by the airlines tweaking ticket prices, by websites wading through that gaming, and by those sites advertising to get clicks. Maybe this is the future of employment[1], but it sounds grim to me. [1] http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quote_657c http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...
- camillomiller 10y ago
  Maybe then we'll have a PressScanner (like SkyScanner) service to find the best subscription prices
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Mark my words--This is the future of all Retail: Personalized pricing determined by big data's prediction of your ability and willingness to pay. And yes, it will be awful. "Log in to view the price of this item, sucka!"
  - obstinate 10y ago
    I would expect that the presence of competition will make this impossible for most things. If two actors are in a space, and one has this tech, then all the above-median-price potential buyers will shop at the one without the tech. If the first sale doctrine were ever eroded, then maybe.
  - frogpelt 10y ago
    Well, surely, they'll also have a generic guest price. Those who want to avoid the friction of logging in can pay a little extra (or maybe less sometimes) for the right to do so.
    - intended 10y ago
      ? I think the incentives behind your assumptions wont match ground reality incentives to firms. So They wont keep a guest price, they'll keep a bait price. The rest of the time price discovery and visibility will be governed by their information of your financial state and habits (maybe just habits, if you have credit).
camillomiller 10y ago
So if I use a VPN to spoof an IP from a potentially depressed area (say, Detroit), with this system I'll get a 70% discount on my NYT subscription?
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Presumably at some point you will need to pay, which, if they're smart, is tied to your real identity, so they'll hit you with your real non-Detroit price when you log in.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    There's a hidden opportunity in there for poor people acting as subscription brokers.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Hidden only until the machine learns their pattern.
johanneskanybal 10y ago
In a less static market than aviation people wouldn't put up with it. Also it's pure evil.
Fej 10y ago
Until I read this comment section I didn't know Blendle existed. It physically disturbs me. Literally, as in I have this pit in my stomach. If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles at the expense of substantive ones. I presume they would be fact-checked clickbaity articles, but clickbait nonetheless. This type of business model is all but certainly not fit for traditional news content. What do you think will get to the top, top 10 lists - or more informative but ultimately less widely exciting news stories? On a side note, L2 did a short Winners & Losers segment about how news companies made huge mistakes in the online world. It's an interesting little watch: https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc
- amelius 10y ago
  Yes, and I would add that we probably don't want an "App store for news", which would mean a single gatekeeper, and we would eventually pay a tax on our news. Also, they could build a database of our reading behavior, which would be worse than the cross-site user-tracking cookies of today.
- demonshalo 10y ago
  > If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles What makes you think that this isn't the case already? I work in this industry and I can tell you for a fact that none of those organizations are News organizations anymore. They are traffic brokers. Some of their authors still have integrity, but the organizations themselves don't care about quality. All they want is traffic. Pure and simple!
- sdiepend 10y ago
  I've been using blendle for quite a while now. But I don't use it very often yet. Mostly when people on twitter, or other social media, share articles which are behind paywalls, I check if it's available for reading on blendle. This way I can read a lot of stuff behind paywalls and even immediately get my money back if the article was bad.
amelius 10y ago
I think Google really doesn't want a closed system (like Amazon) for news. It is in their interest to keep the web as open as possible. Therefore, I'm hoping that Google can come up with a good open solution.

61 points by nreece 10y ago

us0r 10y ago

I canceled all my subscriptions. I would happily pay 1 organization good money for subscriptions to the top 6-10 papers. I'm really surprised they haven't tried this yet.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
Try Blendle[1]. Disclaimer I use their service and like it. They let you fill your "wallet" with money which doesn't expire, and then they give you access to a bunch of different newspapers on a per-story basis for a variable amount of money per story based on the newspaper. So if you were spending $20/month on a NYT subscription you can put $20/Month into your Blendle account and read the stories of interest on the Times, WSJ, Post, Economist, etc and often have money left over. They have a generous "don't like it and we'll refund your money" which is quick and simple to use (I've used this probably half a dozen times when the article turned out to be just fluff). The articles have no additional advertising, render well on mobile or desktop or tablet. I dropped my NYT and WSJ subscriptions and read them on Blendle, that has cost me significantly less than the combined subscription rates. [1] https://blendle.com/ https://blendle.com/
- macintux 10y ago
  Thank you! I've long wanted some sort of micropayment system for news, this looks promising.
- thedarkginger 10y ago
  Glad you shared. I found OP frustrating in that the core problem of digital publishing for profit doesn't seem to be the inability to price the content correctly but rather publishers' inability to deliver a product that customers would even pay for. When a Google News search reveals multiple copies of near identical stories (let's say NYT, a wire service, and a local paper using a wire service), the value proposition to a user of paying for one newspaper is generally low. Never made sense to me why the Netflix model (that Blendle seems closest to cracking right now) was never applied to accessing good journalism in one place.
amelius 10y ago
Another option would be that news companies build an app and sell content through the app store. I'm not in favor of this solution though, because I don't want one company to know what I read, and I don't like the idea of one company influencing what I read and I wouldn't want a near monopolist to put a tax on my news.

scep12 10y ago

The TL;DR is that a tech company with enough information about its users could charge them "dynamically" based on what it thinks they would pay for news. Should books/music/movies/tv cost more to those who can afford to pay more as well?

vasaulys 10y ago
An interesting business idea if not a depressing future. Doesn't Amazon do this in a way? I've seen prices for kindle books change depending on if I'm logged in or not, and not always in my favor.
Grimes23 10y ago
Don't companies already do this? The price for a copy of cs:go costs different amounts in each country https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/ https://steamdb.info/sub/54029/
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
I recall reading a forum post some years ago where a few people had talked about the price of a product being different for the guy on the mac (>$) than the guy on windows. So, it's not completely unheard of I suppose.
matt4077 10y ago
Airlines are notorious for this. One-day return? Business traveller! Hit him! Searching flights on a Saturday afternoon? Private travel – let's discount. High-DPI display? Did someone say "discount"? I meant "this counts" – as a good reason to raise your prices.

quintin 10y ago

Related conversation from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early product manager Dave Morin: https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928 https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928

chrisabrams 10y ago

I cannot imagine such a product/feature could exist on the market. This makes Microsoft's anti-trust issues with IE look like a joke in comparison.

jsperson 10y ago

I welcome alternative business models. The current trend is destroying quality news organizations and leaving consumers wanting. Another option is the pay what you want model. This would be a lot easier to implement and would eliminate the possible backlash. This morning I investigated the WSJ. After the intro period discount expires it's about $400 a year - a lot more than it's worth to me. Instead of getting $100 or even $200 from me they get nothing. Pay by the article services like Blendle show promise, but they really need to work on the interface.

matt4077 10y ago
Pay-By-Article is, I believed, feared by publishers and journalists because they see how often the number of clicks and comments diverges from the perceived importance of stories. Once pay-by-article is the driving force of everything, it will be incredibly hard for these organisations to resist the urge to cheat here and there. Send a writer and a photographer to Tajikistan for two months to report on the election? For the same price, you can get 120 "analysis" pieces on the effect of social media in the presidential election. Instead, I'd be happy to see "casual" online subscriptions: I believe there's many people like me who read lots of sources at medium depth. There should be a range of the number of monthly article views (anywhere from 30 to 200 I would say) where the publication is important enough for a reader to commit to spending some money, but not important enough to warrant a full subscription. Ideally, the publishers would band together and create an actual "netflix of news" with such packages for the top-50+ publications worldwide. There must be a huge untapped market of avid news consumers currently underserved by the market. Why hasn't it happened? I can only guess that the publishers are weary of relinquishing the reader relationship to any middleman. I think we're approaching the point where they'll either have to do it themselves, or these behemoths (google, fb, Apple) will do it for them.
- mistermann 10y ago
  This idea is great, provided they get together and support one subscription spanning numerous publications. I'd like to read some of The Economist, Harper's, Vanity Fair, etc but am not interested enough to buy a full subscription. If they don't do something like this, it might be the end of them. The internet is good in so many ways, but it also causes a lot of problems.

username223 10y ago

tl;dr -- Surveillance-based dynamic pricing for news articles., i.e. "making the world a worse place." I don't know anyone who does not loathe booking a flight, and I shudder at the millions of dollars spent by the airlines tweaking ticket prices, by websites wading through that gaming, and by those sites advertising to get clicks. Maybe this is the future of employment[1], but it sounds grim to me. [1] http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quote_657c http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...

camillomiller 10y ago
Maybe then we'll have a PressScanner (like SkyScanner) service to find the best subscription prices
ryandrake 10y ago
Mark my words--This is the future of all Retail: Personalized pricing determined by big data's prediction of your ability and willingness to pay. And yes, it will be awful. "Log in to view the price of this item, sucka!"
- obstinate 10y ago
  I would expect that the presence of competition will make this impossible for most things. If two actors are in a space, and one has this tech, then all the above-median-price potential buyers will shop at the one without the tech. If the first sale doctrine were ever eroded, then maybe.
- frogpelt 10y ago
  Well, surely, they'll also have a generic guest price. Those who want to avoid the friction of logging in can pay a little extra (or maybe less sometimes) for the right to do so.
  - intended 10y ago
    ? I think the incentives behind your assumptions wont match ground reality incentives to firms. So They wont keep a guest price, they'll keep a bait price. The rest of the time price discovery and visibility will be governed by their information of your financial state and habits (maybe just habits, if you have credit).

camillomiller 10y ago

So if I use a VPN to spoof an IP from a potentially depressed area (say, Detroit), with this system I'll get a 70% discount on my NYT subscription?

ryandrake 10y ago
Presumably at some point you will need to pay, which, if they're smart, is tied to your real identity, so they'll hit you with your real non-Detroit price when you log in.
- majewsky 10y ago
  There's a hidden opportunity in there for poor people acting as subscription brokers.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Hidden only until the machine learns their pattern.

johanneskanybal 10y ago

In a less static market than aviation people wouldn't put up with it. Also it's pure evil.

Fej 10y ago

Until I read this comment section I didn't know Blendle existed. It physically disturbs me. Literally, as in I have this pit in my stomach. If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles at the expense of substantive ones. I presume they would be fact-checked clickbaity articles, but clickbait nonetheless. This type of business model is all but certainly not fit for traditional news content. What do you think will get to the top, top 10 lists - or more informative but ultimately less widely exciting news stories? On a side note, L2 did a short Winners & Losers segment about how news companies made huge mistakes in the online world. It's an interesting little watch: https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc

amelius 10y ago
Yes, and I would add that we probably don't want an "App store for news", which would mean a single gatekeeper, and we would eventually pay a tax on our news. Also, they could build a database of our reading behavior, which would be worse than the cross-site user-tracking cookies of today.
demonshalo 10y ago
> If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles What makes you think that this isn't the case already? I work in this industry and I can tell you for a fact that none of those organizations are News organizations anymore. They are traffic brokers. Some of their authors still have integrity, but the organizations themselves don't care about quality. All they want is traffic. Pure and simple!
sdiepend 10y ago
I've been using blendle for quite a while now. But I don't use it very often yet. Mostly when people on twitter, or other social media, share articles which are behind paywalls, I check if it's available for reading on blendle. This way I can read a lot of stuff behind paywalls and even immediately get my money back if the article was bad.

amelius 10y ago

I think Google really doesn't want a closed system (like Amazon) for news. It is in their interest to keep the web as open as possible. Therefore, I'm hoping that Google can come up with a good open solution.