Blog of Cynthia Typaldos: Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Buy.com buys social networking site Metails.com

-- Buy.com Buys Social Networking Site Metails: Buy.com, the online retail site, has bought out a small Boston based social networking startup called Metails.com.

Thanks to www.paidcontent.org for the alert…go here for more info:

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_18.shtml#010755

I never even heard of this site…not that I could possible have heard of them all. I wonder how many there are now?

Business Week article about revenue threats to content providers

Business Week article about revenue model threats to content providers due to shared registrations and mirroring

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041019_9800_db016.htm

Why Web Publishers Fear a Little Sharing
Surfers are increasingly sharing passwords to gain access to online content, threatening ad revenue at registration-only sites

“…these community registration systems pose a problem for online publishers. To boost ad sales, many content providers require viewers to answer questions about their gender, age, and income level before allowing access to their site. With that information, they can tell their advertisers exactly what kind of demographic groups they would be reaching and then charge a premium to advertise to those readers.“

”Take away such registration, and the future of the $6.6 billion online advertising market begins to look fuzzy. Advertising typically accounts for 85% to 90% of an online content provider's revenues, so this has got to be troubling…”

…….

“A growing chorus says the only credible response is to abandon online registrations in favor of registrations for premium services, such as message boards. "We use registration only where it makes sense to do so from a reader's perspective," explains Adrian Holovaty, lead developer of World Online, the Web division of The Lawrence Journal-World newspaper in Lawrence, Kan. "The classic example is on message boards and comment forms, where readers want to register so they can own the rights to their usernames -- and, thus, their online reputations." "

……..

‘Net collaborators pose other dangers to publishers. Just in the last month, sites that completely copy a content providers' site have popped up. Mirrordot.com first posted in September copies, summaries, and links of stories that appear on Slashdot.org, a popular tech message board. Then Mirrordot.com simply caches the stories to which Slashdot links. Mirrordot.com, which runs its own ads with the stories as well as the original sites' ads, tallies the traffic for itself. And it all appears quite legal under current law, say experts.”

……..

“On the upside for publishers, getting someone to read a news organization's "dumb story", as Haughley puts it, may be getting easier. But making a buck off of content may be getting a lot harder.”

These are just excerpts, to read the entire article, please go here:

Business Week article about revenue model threats to content providers due to shared registrations and mirroring

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041019_9800_db016.htm

at the time of this posting, registration is not required J

Thanks to www.paidcontent.org (a great daily newsletter) for alerting me to this article

http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_10_19.shtml#010777

My solution to this problem is called “SubscriptionPal”.

Cynthia

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