4 ms·

I know this is completely off topic but news on the internet is such a mess. I wanted to read this but I'm going to pay for a bloomberg subscription. I would ha

by anm89 7y ago

I know this is completely off topic but news on the internet is such a mess. I wanted to read this but I'm going to pay for a bloomberg subscription. I would happily pay some amount of money to read this but there are at least 10 publications in line in front of Bloomberg and because buying one individual subscription get's me access to very little of want I end up willing to pay money but still with no subscriptions and no access to online news. Netflix for news is such an obvious unicorn and seems like it would be a better situation for medium sized publications like Bloomberg. I don't understand how it doesn't exist yet.

spockz 7y ago
In the Netherlands this exists as Blendle. It worked so well and “threatened” news paper revenue that the news papers now starting their own alternative. The interesting bit is that news papers also make some articles available for free which are paid for on the Blendle platform. Afaik, Blendle is also expanding to the US.
- icebraining 7y ago
  There's also Inkl, but the selection is somewhat limited.
- anm89 7y ago
  I hope so! I would pay for that no question. And I have a feeling many other people would as well.
usrusr 7y ago
I believe that a literal "Netflix for news" would never be accepted by news sites ("newspapers") due to how much it would take away control and ownership of the customer relation. In an earlier post to hn [0] I have described what I believe might work instead, a payment and co-subscription service offered to news outlets that isn't exposing any own branding to end users. Once you hand over your subscriptions to an aggregator brand, there is no turning back. Three key assumptions are that #1 consumers are unwilling to forget the "luniversal availability of the decades of ad-financed web #2 consumers are unwilling to have more subscriptions than they had in the age of paper (exactly one, almost universally) #3 the discrepancy between #1 and #2 makes consumers not pay at all unless "Netflix for news" or something equivalent is available #4 news sites understand and accept the implications, particularly that giving away content to someone who already had a subscriptions elsewhere isn't a lossy sale, due to #2 Main challenges are defining and enforcing the content availability delta between "home" subscription and co-subscription and dealing with price differentials (perhaps by defining the co-subscription availability as a freely scalable ramp?) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19736903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19736903
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
>Netflix for news is such an obvious unicorn and seems like it would be a better situation for medium sized publications like Bloomberg. Bloomberg has loads of professional subscribers who either get the news bundled with their terminal subscription or pay for it separately. I get your general point but Bloomberg is not the best example of a medium sized publication that needs this.
- anm89 7y ago
  Yeah fair enough. I disagree with myself in retrospect. I only meant medium sized as opposed to the absolute top tier.

by anm89 7y ago

spockz 7y ago

In the Netherlands this exists as Blendle. It worked so well and “threatened” news paper revenue that the news papers now starting their own alternative. The interesting bit is that news papers also make some articles available for free which are paid for on the Blendle platform. Afaik, Blendle is also expanding to the US.

icebraining 7y ago
There's also Inkl, but the selection is somewhat limited.
anm89 7y ago
I hope so! I would pay for that no question. And I have a feeling many other people would as well.

usrusr 7y ago

I believe that a literal "Netflix for news" would never be accepted by news sites ("newspapers") due to how much it would take away control and ownership of the customer relation. In an earlier post to hn [0] I have described what I believe might work instead, a payment and co-subscription service offered to news outlets that isn't exposing any own branding to end users. Once you hand over your subscriptions to an aggregator brand, there is no turning back. Three key assumptions are that #1 consumers are unwilling to forget the "luniversal availability of the decades of ad-financed web #2 consumers are unwilling to have more subscriptions than they had in the age of paper (exactly one, almost universally) #3 the discrepancy between #1 and #2 makes consumers not pay at all unless "Netflix for news" or something equivalent is available #4 news sites understand and accept the implications, particularly that giving away content to someone who already had a subscriptions elsewhere isn't a lossy sale, due to #2 Main challenges are defining and enforcing the content availability delta between "home" subscription and co-subscription and dealing with price differentials (perhaps by defining the co-subscription availability as a freely scalable ramp?) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19736903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19736903

Mvandenbergh 7y ago

>Netflix for news is such an obvious unicorn and seems like it would be a better situation for medium sized publications like Bloomberg. Bloomberg has loads of professional subscribers who either get the news bundled with their terminal subscription or pay for it separately. I get your general point but Bloomberg is not the best example of a medium sized publication that needs this.

anm89 7y ago
Yeah fair enough. I disagree with myself in retrospect. I only meant medium sized as opposed to the absolute top tier.