4 ms·

Google restates the FTC’s dissection of newspaper revenue: 80% advertising, 17% newsstand, 3% subscriptions. “Pay walls,” it says, “could be an effective way to

by bigmac 16y ago

Google restates the FTC’s dissection of newspaper revenue: 80% advertising, 17% newsstand, 3% subscriptions. “Pay walls,” it says, “could be an effective way to raise the 3% revenue figure.” Amdahl's Law, anybody? Its not just relevant for software optimization. Certain other hot topics could use a logical assessment like that (e.g. greenhouse gas emission).

mrduncan 16y ago
I'd never never heard of Amdahl's Law before so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Essentially, Amdahl's law is used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahls_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahls_law
archangel_one 16y ago
But Amdahl's Law isn't totally applicable in this case, because if you manage to gain more subscriptions via paywalls or whatever, you raise the 3% figure but also the total revenue. It's possible (albeit unlikely) that subscriptions could increase to the point where they account for 50% of revenue, without necessarily decreasing the number of newspapers sold via newsstand or the advertising take. In the reverse case, where you're trying to reduce one of them to reduce the total, it would apply well; your greenhouse gas example seems appropriate. Or the way the media reports political spending, for example; they like to focus on small examples that people relate to better, which make very little difference individually to the overall total.
Confusion 16y ago
Amdahl's law does not apply to a situation where you are trying to change the sizes of the parts involved. In this situation, you could increase the returns from 'paying customers' ('subscriptions' and 'newsstands') to constitute 80% of the whole, while the returns from advertising stay exactly the same.

4 ms·

Google restates the FTC’s dissection of newspaper revenue: 80% advertising, 17% newsstand, 3% subscriptions. “Pay walls,” it says, “could be an effective way to

by bigmac 16y ago

mrduncan 16y ago
I'd never never heard of Amdahl's Law before so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Essentially, Amdahl's law is used to find the maximum expected improvement to an overall system when only part of the system is improved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahls_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahls_law
archangel_one 16y ago
But Amdahl's Law isn't totally applicable in this case, because if you manage to gain more subscriptions via paywalls or whatever, you raise the 3% figure but also the total revenue. It's possible (albeit unlikely) that subscriptions could increase to the point where they account for 50% of revenue, without necessarily decreasing the number of newspapers sold via newsstand or the advertising take. In the reverse case, where you're trying to reduce one of them to reduce the total, it would apply well; your greenhouse gas example seems appropriate. Or the way the media reports political spending, for example; they like to focus on small examples that people relate to better, which make very little difference individually to the overall total.
Confusion 16y ago
Amdahl's law does not apply to a situation where you are trying to change the sizes of the parts involved. In this situation, you could increase the returns from 'paying customers' ('subscriptions' and 'newsstands') to constitute 80% of the whole, while the returns from advertising stay exactly the same.