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It's $250mm for the WaPo brand. Empowering the ordinary citizen to contribute to the global pool of community information is the future. Blogging was the firs

It's $250mm for the WaPo brand. Empowering the ordinary citizen to contribute to the global pool of community information is the future. Blogging was the first attempt in this direction, but it has failed because the distributed nature of blogs doesn't support content discovery. As far as I'm concerned, AMZN already has plenty of brand recognition to talk about any technological innovation they might integrate with the WaPo brand. I look forward to AMZN playing its cards in the space and seeing if they can compete against a truly focused and unencumbered competitor. Production is easy, discovery and profitability are the problems. Best wishes, Bezos!

ChuckMcM 13y ago
"Production is easy, discovery and profitability are the problems." I agree, and that is what makes this so interesting. Lets say you had a 'kindle store' like thing but it was "News for You", and it had a search box kind of like a search engine box, but you could pull up your Kindle, any time something was happening, and type "Boston Bombing" into the search box, And poof you'd get all the stories about the Boston Bombing available to read after downloading them over the cellular network. Can you buy "inches of news" like you buy cellular minutes? With a roll over plan? There are some tremendously disruptive businesses here.
- nwzpaperman 13y ago
  Or maybe a news platform that passively ranked community-generated content geospatially. Already built and innovating on the core platform... :)
crusso 13y ago
The article mentions that this is a Bezos-only deal, no Amazon involvement.
- nwzpaperman 13y ago
  Come now, certainly you don't believe that. Capital structure is an integral piece of corporate strategy as is board construction. Bezos has liquidated so much AMZN stock he doesn't need AMZN's balance sheet for a piddly $250mm transaction. He might even figure out how to do something he hasn't done at AMZN and that's turn a profit. The last I checked, AMZN still had an infinite PE. By keeping WaPo remote he can at least create the appearance that AMZN is corporately neutral for whatever news platform ideas AMZN pursues.
  - salvadors 13y ago
    > He might even figure out how to do something he hasn't done at AMZN and that's turn a profit. You mean like the $645MM profit they made in 2008, the $902MM profit they made in 2009, the $1.15BN profit in 2010, or $631MM profit in 2011? Or is all that nullified by the $39MM loss in 2012 (due to LivingSocial)?
    - clarky07 13y ago
      considering they have a market cap of 137 billion, those are really tiny profits. Obviously the strategy at Amazon is to grow revenues and invest in the business, but that doesn't mean the parent is wrong. Amazon has essentially had no profit to speak of compared with their market cap over their entire company life. People investing in them have done so under the hope/expectation that once they reach their goal of ??? (world domination maybe?) the profits will be really big. That or they are just hoping a greater fool will buy their shares higher at some point in the future.
      - hef19898 13y ago
        There was a very interessting article once (shame on me that I didn't bookmark it...) comparing the strategy of Apple and Amazon. Main point was that Amazon pursues a low (zero?) margin strategy. Guess that's what commerce should be about, cash instead of margin. Aldi, a pretty big german discounter of grocceries, works that way and became huge. That they are loosing right now against "new" entrants is a different thing. But having seen time and again profitable companies struggle in time of crisis simply because they run out of cash, I'd rather back a company like Amazon.
        coolsank 13y ago
        Was this the article that you were talking about? http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins
        13y ago
austenallred 13y ago
Journalistic institutions, in an effort to inform the masses, perform three critical functions: 1. Production of information, 2. Curation of information 3. Verification of information. A more colloquial way to say that might be "creation, curation, and fact-checking." So far the creation aspect is almost entirely dominated by ordinary citizens. With nearly everyone carrying internet-connected devices for photo, video and text input, there's simply no way a news organization, no matter how large or well funded, can keep up. Where "News" is still lacking now has more to do with the latter two points. The best content is invariably on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, etc. but finding that needle in the haystack that is a news event is borderline impossible for the "ordinary citizen." Even the major news organizations are largely poring over the data that comes in and trying to find the best stuff. The third part - the fact checking- not many have time for anymore. The world moves so quickly that verifying accuracy is much less beneficial than seeking the next scoop. News orgs can move fast, make mistakes, and issue retractions later if they were wrong. Or they can just say "we're getting reports that..." (Translation: "We're watching Twitter and people are saying...") I truly believe that creating a system that allows ordinary citizens to curate (vote on) and fact check the firehose of information flowing through social media networks is the bright, sustainable, profitable (!) future of journalism. Full disclosure: I've been building and testing a product for a year that does precisely that, so I'm a little bit biased.
- chadzawistowski 13y ago
  That product sounds interesting! Let us (or at least me) know when it begins to come available!
  - austenallred 13y ago
    http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com should be launching in a few weeks, just have to tie a few loose ends together.
    - SimHacker 13y ago
      Mmmmmm, grass!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
atmosx 13y ago
If that's the case, why does the name change? IMHO that was in order for the old ownership to provide some dignity to the old Post (which broke many world-wide level news over the years, i.e. Watergate) from thew new ownership, in case J. Bezos turns the venerated newspaper into a trash magazine.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

"Production is easy, discovery and profitability are the problems." I agree, and that is what makes this so interesting. Lets say you had a 'kindle store' like thing but it was "News for You", and it had a search box kind of like a search engine box, but you could pull up your Kindle, any time something was happening, and type "Boston Bombing" into the search box, And poof you'd get all the stories about the Boston Bombing available to read after downloading them over the cellular network. Can you buy "inches of news" like you buy cellular minutes? With a roll over plan? There are some tremendously disruptive businesses here.

nwzpaperman 13y ago
Or maybe a news platform that passively ranked community-generated content geospatially. Already built and innovating on the core platform... :)

crusso 13y ago

The article mentions that this is a Bezos-only deal, no Amazon involvement.

nwzpaperman 13y ago
Come now, certainly you don't believe that. Capital structure is an integral piece of corporate strategy as is board construction. Bezos has liquidated so much AMZN stock he doesn't need AMZN's balance sheet for a piddly $250mm transaction. He might even figure out how to do something he hasn't done at AMZN and that's turn a profit. The last I checked, AMZN still had an infinite PE. By keeping WaPo remote he can at least create the appearance that AMZN is corporately neutral for whatever news platform ideas AMZN pursues.
- salvadors 13y ago
  > He might even figure out how to do something he hasn't done at AMZN and that's turn a profit. You mean like the $645MM profit they made in 2008, the $902MM profit they made in 2009, the $1.15BN profit in 2010, or $631MM profit in 2011? Or is all that nullified by the $39MM loss in 2012 (due to LivingSocial)?
  - clarky07 13y ago
    considering they have a market cap of 137 billion, those are really tiny profits. Obviously the strategy at Amazon is to grow revenues and invest in the business, but that doesn't mean the parent is wrong. Amazon has essentially had no profit to speak of compared with their market cap over their entire company life. People investing in them have done so under the hope/expectation that once they reach their goal of ??? (world domination maybe?) the profits will be really big. That or they are just hoping a greater fool will buy their shares higher at some point in the future.
    - hef19898 13y ago
      There was a very interessting article once (shame on me that I didn't bookmark it...) comparing the strategy of Apple and Amazon. Main point was that Amazon pursues a low (zero?) margin strategy. Guess that's what commerce should be about, cash instead of margin. Aldi, a pretty big german discounter of grocceries, works that way and became huge. That they are loosing right now against "new" entrants is a different thing. But having seen time and again profitable companies struggle in time of crisis simply because they run out of cash, I'd rather back a company like Amazon.
      - coolsank 13y ago
        Was this the article that you were talking about? http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2012/11/28/amazon-and-margins
        13y ago

austenallred 13y ago

Journalistic institutions, in an effort to inform the masses, perform three critical functions: 1. Production of information, 2. Curation of information 3. Verification of information. A more colloquial way to say that might be "creation, curation, and fact-checking." So far the creation aspect is almost entirely dominated by ordinary citizens. With nearly everyone carrying internet-connected devices for photo, video and text input, there's simply no way a news organization, no matter how large or well funded, can keep up. Where "News" is still lacking now has more to do with the latter two points. The best content is invariably on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, etc. but finding that needle in the haystack that is a news event is borderline impossible for the "ordinary citizen." Even the major news organizations are largely poring over the data that comes in and trying to find the best stuff. The third part - the fact checking- not many have time for anymore. The world moves so quickly that verifying accuracy is much less beneficial than seeking the next scoop. News orgs can move fast, make mistakes, and issue retractions later if they were wrong. Or they can just say "we're getting reports that..." (Translation: "We're watching Twitter and people are saying...") I truly believe that creating a system that allows ordinary citizens to curate (vote on) and fact check the firehose of information flowing through social media networks is the bright, sustainable, profitable (!) future of journalism. Full disclosure: I've been building and testing a product for a year that does precisely that, so I'm a little bit biased.

chadzawistowski 13y ago
That product sounds interesting! Let us (or at least me) know when it begins to come available!
- austenallred 13y ago
  http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com should be launching in a few weeks, just have to tie a few loose ends together.
  - SimHacker 13y ago
    Mmmmmm, grass!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

atmosx 13y ago

If that's the case, why does the name change? IMHO that was in order for the old ownership to provide some dignity to the old Post (which broke many world-wide level news over the years, i.e. Watergate) from thew new ownership, in case J. Bezos turns the venerated newspaper into a trash magazine.