4 ms·

Publishers: Forget the content, here's your business model

12 points by kareemm 17y ago

alanthonyc 17y ago
"one of the best, if not the best, news/article filter out there. ... if you remove the coding and start-up articles ... a super-interesting collection of smart writing and interesting thinking." Rather ironic.
- thristian 17y ago
  For Alanis Morissette values of ironic, anyway. I've often thought that HN would be a great news/article filter if I could only remove the start-up articles, and I'm sure there are people who feel it would be great if they could read the start-up articles but remove the coding ones. I am somewhat surprised that someone would want to remove both, but then there are often fascinating threads that spring up around security or robotics or similar matters.
  - alanthonyc 17y ago
    Given that her song repeatedly ascribes irony to things that are in no way ironic, I assume you're giving me a subtle jab. Since this forum was (I believe) started to discuss startups and programming, then it's ironic that the author finds those are the things he wants to remove. Please explain to me how I'm misusing the term.
    - thristian 17y ago
      Wikipedia goes into far more detail about the technical definition of irony than I care to, but I believe the important part is that a statement is ironic when speaker's words have a relevance to the situation that the speaker is unaware of. I'm assuming that nobody could read HN for very long and remain unaware that the site is targeted at programmers and entrepreneurs. Because the author of the original blog post knew the purpose of HN, he would have recognised the incongruity between his statement (that coding and startup articles be filtered out) and the reality (that HN is all about coding and startup articles). Since he was aware of the disparity, and irony requires unawareness, there was no irony. I'd have given you "sarcasm" or "incongruity", but "irony" is one of those topics that triggers my "Someone Is Wrong On The Internet" reflex, I'm afraid.
AndrewWarner 17y ago
Is there a site that does some of what he talks about? Is there a site that shows what articles were hot here yesterday or last week?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  He's really talking about an API. The NYTimes has one. I do think there's a business model there. What if the NYTimes shut out Google in its robots.txt file but then offered up full "firehose" access to it's content via the api for a price? Nobody pays for content. Everybody pays for data. Publishers should build solid APIs, shut out the spiders, and then charge search engines, aggregators etc. for full, rights-free access to their stuff.
- joshsharp 17y ago
  If by "here" you mean on HN, use this link from the footer: http://news.ycombinator.com/lists http://news.ycombinator.com/lists and select the 'best' list.
brandnewlow 17y ago
So.....offer an API. Charge money for it. Got it.
njharman 17y ago
Some problems: That model has minimal cost of entry. Therefore an unpredictable and vast number of competitors, therefore high risk. Google could decide to do it one day on a whim and with their resources they would do it better and bam! whatever time/money you spent on it would be a loss. Not sure what you mean by publisher and content, all your examples hn, digg, delicious I wouldn't consider content publishers at all. The traditional content publishers such as newspapers don't have the culture, management, payscales to attract and support large teams of top-notch devs. btw newspapers (and other content producers) already do a lot of filtering. Might not be that noticeable because the crap that gets "downvoted" never makes it to print/online and they filter for "mainstream" not intelligent, well-read, young entrepreneurs. Maybe a great idea for a new, young, small startup. As a model for existing content publishers, not so sure.
eli 17y ago
So... the answer is stop publishing and switch to aggregating? Sorry, but I'm not seeing how building a better filter enables you to raise the money for an investigation that uncovers secret NSA wiretaps.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  I think the idea is to charge for filtering, not for content.
kierank 17y ago
What's he's talking about really is strong filtering. Current filtering systems weight user contributions equally which means trolls and other junk get in there easily.
calambrac 17y ago
The New York Times and other media companies are filters. They pick the stories that go on their front page, they decide where to dedicate news-gathering resources, they have an editorial voice...

12 points by kareemm 17y ago

"one of the best, if not the best, news/article filter out there. ... if you remove the coding and start-up articles ... a super-interesting collection of smart writing and interesting thinking." Rather ironic.

thristian 17y ago
For Alanis Morissette values of ironic, anyway. I've often thought that HN would be a great news/article filter if I could only remove the start-up articles, and I'm sure there are people who feel it would be great if they could read the start-up articles but remove the coding ones. I am somewhat surprised that someone would want to remove both, but then there are often fascinating threads that spring up around security or robotics or similar matters.
- alanthonyc 17y ago
  Given that her song repeatedly ascribes irony to things that are in no way ironic, I assume you're giving me a subtle jab. Since this forum was (I believe) started to discuss startups and programming, then it's ironic that the author finds those are the things he wants to remove. Please explain to me how I'm misusing the term.
  - thristian 17y ago
    Wikipedia goes into far more detail about the technical definition of irony than I care to, but I believe the important part is that a statement is ironic when speaker's words have a relevance to the situation that the speaker is unaware of. I'm assuming that nobody could read HN for very long and remain unaware that the site is targeted at programmers and entrepreneurs. Because the author of the original blog post knew the purpose of HN, he would have recognised the incongruity between his statement (that coding and startup articles be filtered out) and the reality (that HN is all about coding and startup articles). Since he was aware of the disparity, and irony requires unawareness, there was no irony. I'd have given you "sarcasm" or "incongruity", but "irony" is one of those topics that triggers my "Someone Is Wrong On The Internet" reflex, I'm afraid.

AndrewWarner 17y ago

Is there a site that does some of what he talks about? Is there a site that shows what articles were hot here yesterday or last week?

brandnewlow 17y ago
He's really talking about an API. The NYTimes has one. I do think there's a business model there. What if the NYTimes shut out Google in its robots.txt file but then offered up full "firehose" access to it's content via the api for a price? Nobody pays for content. Everybody pays for data. Publishers should build solid APIs, shut out the spiders, and then charge search engines, aggregators etc. for full, rights-free access to their stuff.
joshsharp 17y ago
If by "here" you mean on HN, use this link from the footer: http://news.ycombinator.com/lists http://news.ycombinator.com/lists and select the 'best' list.

brandnewlow 17y ago

So.....offer an API. Charge money for it. Got it.

njharman 17y ago

Some problems: That model has minimal cost of entry. Therefore an unpredictable and vast number of competitors, therefore high risk. Google could decide to do it one day on a whim and with their resources they would do it better and bam! whatever time/money you spent on it would be a loss. Not sure what you mean by publisher and content, all your examples hn, digg, delicious I wouldn't consider content publishers at all. The traditional content publishers such as newspapers don't have the culture, management, payscales to attract and support large teams of top-notch devs. btw newspapers (and other content producers) already do a lot of filtering. Might not be that noticeable because the crap that gets "downvoted" never makes it to print/online and they filter for "mainstream" not intelligent, well-read, young entrepreneurs. Maybe a great idea for a new, young, small startup. As a model for existing content publishers, not so sure.

eli 17y ago

So... the answer is stop publishing and switch to aggregating? Sorry, but I'm not seeing how building a better filter enables you to raise the money for an investigation that uncovers secret NSA wiretaps.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
I think the idea is to charge for filtering, not for content.

kierank 17y ago

What's he's talking about really is strong filtering. Current filtering systems weight user contributions equally which means trolls and other junk get in there easily.

calambrac 17y ago

The New York Times and other media companies are filters. They pick the stories that go on their front page, they decide where to dedicate news-gathering resources, they have an editorial voice...