A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had been reading ..actually listening to Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of Radical Price. Not long after I posted this, I read that Rupert Murdock announced Fox News would begin charging for their online news content. Mark Cuban had his own advice. He says go for it! Kill the aggregate leaches like Drudge:
This is where all the netizens jump in and tell me I’m crazy. That news sites won’t ever do this. That’s not the internet way. Which of course is exactly how they respond to every business question involving the net. The major news sites are keeping the aggregators that don’t originate news content alive. From Drudge Report on down. You are crazy to do so. Let the search engines send you traffic. Block the rest. Your revenue impact will be minimal. The competitive impact significant.Maybe he he didn’t get a chance to read Anderson’s book; then again maybe he did. Maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t know. After all, Murdock is a billionaire and my guess is at his age, he knows the difference between a really bad business move and one that should work.
People pay for online content all the time. That’s nothing new. But I find it hard to believe Mr. Murdock will be able to pull this one off when hundreds of other news sites, and blogs offer news for free. I mean we’re talking general news! Nothing specialized. Am I missing something?
