

Prediction: Newspapers will go bankrupt in 2007, unless they corner web classifieds by 1998 - vlad
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/classifieds.html

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pg
He said "many newspapers." And he is not far off. Newspaper ad revenues peaked
in 2000.

[http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_newspapers...](http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_newspapers_economics.asp?cat=4&media=2)

The surprising thing to me is that they have any classified ad revenue left.
This suggests there are still opportunities for startups to take more away
from them.

~~~
vlad
The point was how accurate the prediction has been, with craiglist becoming so
popular since the article was written in 1997. Had Google seen classifieds as
a 'search problem', they would have likely allowed users to submit things
sooner. After all, aren't most social network sites classifieds (rentals,
events, tickets, movies, belongings, personals)?

I agree that NewYorkTimes.com could have easily captured the market by 1998 if
they offered users a free service to post all those things, and later the
ability to contact each other in private, and later have user logins with a
picture profile. But newspapers wanted to continue to sell paper ads and
magazine ads, and classifieds and subscriptions. They didn't fathom that
simply by doing this, tons of users would visit their site, upon which they
could sell all sorts of new types of ads.

That's what some startups are doing now--trying to get as many repeat users as
possible, not knowing exactly what their app will be like a year from now, but
knowing that they will have an ecosystem of users, whether or not competitors
think it's cool or not. If Disco clubs are stupid, but somebody opens one that
fits 100,000 people who keep coming back, it doesn't matter if other
businesses think the model is stupid or not. You have your own ecosystem. And,
the users aren't at somebody else's site, at a certain tv channel, or another
place of business.

------
brlewis
In 2000, Google changed the premise behind this prediction, that advertising
generally doesn't work on the Web.

The bigger problem with his prediction is that newspaper companies rarely go
bankrupt. They get acquired.

He was right on the money that newspapers had a small window to keep hold of
classified advertising. They missed that window; craigslist and ebay took
over.

Also, he was right that newspaper companies are generally hurting in 2007.

[http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/business...](http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/business/index.jsp)

