Shuhaib ShariffThe Dark Knight… Yeah, Right!

In what could potentially be a game changer, media baron Rupert Murdoch has decided to charge a fee to online readers of his UK publications: The Times and its sister publication, The Sunday Times.

Content on the above portals will no longer be free.

Most analysts are baffled with this decision … online news publications have always offered online content for FREE and they’ve made their money from ADVERTISING. Charging a subscription fee for online news content is unheard off, and most media companies will not even attempt it for fear of loosing readership and thereby advertising. Off-course Murdock thinks differently.

In an interview recently he said “There isn’t enough advertising in this world to subsidize all web content. Few media companies are making profits from their presence online”
Very true, if you ask me.

Infact most media publications are struggling to make any money at all … some like The Tribune have gone bankrupt.
The problem is, with the emergence & domination of new media (led-by the big G) , Newspapers haven’t been able to figure out a viable business model. Giving premium content away for free and subsidizing it with online advertising doesn’t work; primarily because the revenues in the online advertising are a pittance and there’s just too much competition online for a relatively small subset of Advertisers.

Google’s monopoly in contextual content advertising is sickening. The last straw, I suppose is that Google’s only competitor “Yahoo Publisher Network” is slated to shutdown next month. Its game over for large publishers dependent solely on online advertising.

In this backdrop, I believe its good move by the old FOX to monetize content via a subscription model. If it works, rest assured that all big media publications will follow in Murdoch’s footsteps. Time will tell.

BTW … Put yourself in Murdoch’s shoes and you could well ask yourself, ‘What do I have to lose?’  The Times and Sunday Times just announced horrific 2009 results, losing some £80m between them… So for those particular properties it doesn’t take a genius to see the current business model is smashed.”

Ever since Microsoft’s search engine Bing.com made its debut, it seems to be getting a lot of press and apparently sizable traction.
There are some who believe that Bing will be a real challenger to Google’s dominance in the SEARCH ENGINE world. There is speculation that Google is beginning to loose market share to Bing (link)

My view on the Bing Vs Google battle:
The only market share Bing is capable of eating into is Yahoo’s

Google offers a better user-experience, has great “mindshare” and a gigantic marketshare. Bing might do *some* things better but thats not enough to make users switch.
You dont displace a market leader (like Google) by being incrementally better… You have a chance if you are exponentially better.

All this percentage talk, is essentially Microsoft’s hype machine at work. Bing’s traffic will spiral downwards once the marketing budget is exhausted!

Also, Google has been around for a long time. They are not a company that rests on past laurels… they are only going to get better.
As for Microsoft’s strategy: first there was MSN search, then LIVE and now Bing. I guess their biggest strength is not search technology related, it is in fact “Re-Branding”

The Print Media business is in big trouble at the moment. Several media houses have altogether shut down and some have filed for bankruptcy (Tribune).

Why is this happening?
The simple economics is that revenues have sunk below publishing costs (i.e. paper + print + distribute). Also, there is some tough competition from Television & New Media. For advertisers, newspapers are no longer the only game in town.
Newspapers need to reinvent… not incrementally but exponentially. Else, they might go the dinosaur way!

Google Vs Yahoo!
Google tried selling contextual print ads in newspapers… but the strategy failed:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/20/google-bails-on-print-ads-and-newspapers/

Surprisingly, Yahoo seems to be enjoying some degree of success here. Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium Keeps Growing:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/09/yahoos-newspaper-consortium-keeps-growing/

Interesting strategy.