
How Facebook and Google could disrupt the subscription model for news - nreece
https://mondaynote.com/how-facebook-and-google-could-disrupt-the-subscription-model-for-news-d94e7aa7fcb6
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username223
tl;dr -- Surveillance-based dynamic pricing for news articles., i.e. "making
the world a worse place."

I don't know anyone who does not loathe booking a flight, and I shudder at the
millions of dollars spent by the airlines tweaking ticket prices, by websites
wading through that gaming, and by those sites advertising to get clicks.
Maybe this is the future of employment[1], but it sounds grim to me.

[1] [http://quotes.liberty-
tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quot...](http://quotes.liberty-
tree.ca/quote/john_maynard_keynes_quote_657c)

~~~
ryandrake
Mark my words--This is the future of all Retail: Personalized pricing
determined by big data's prediction of your ability and willingness to pay.
And yes, it will be awful. "Log in to view the price of this item, sucka!"

~~~
frogpelt
Well, surely, they'll also have a generic guest price.

Those who want to avoid the friction of logging in can pay a little extra (or
maybe less sometimes) for the right to do so.

~~~
intended
?

I think the incentives behind your assumptions wont match ground reality
incentives to firms.

So They wont keep a guest price, they'll keep a bait price.

The rest of the time price discovery and visibility will be governed by their
information of your financial state and habits (maybe just habits, if you have
credit).

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jsperson
I welcome alternative business models. The current trend is destroying quality
news organizations and leaving consumers wanting.

Another option is the pay what you want model. This would be a lot easier to
implement and would eliminate the possible backlash.

This morning I investigated the WSJ. After the intro period discount expires
it's about $400 a year - a lot more than it's worth to me. Instead of getting
$100 or even $200 from me they get nothing.

Pay by the article services like Blendle show promise, but they really need to
work on the interface.

~~~
matt4077
Pay-By-Article is, I believed, feared by publishers and journalists because
they see how often the number of clicks and comments diverges from the
perceived importance of stories.

Once pay-by-article is the driving force of everything, it will be incredibly
hard for these organisations to resist the urge to cheat here and there. Send
a writer and a photographer to Tajikistan for two months to report on the
election? For the same price, you can get 120 "analysis" pieces on the effect
of social media in the presidential election.

Instead, I'd be happy to see "casual" online subscriptions: I believe there's
many people like me who read lots of sources at medium depth. There should be
a range of the number of monthly article views (anywhere from 30 to 200 I
would say) where the publication is important enough for a reader to commit to
spending some money, but not important enough to warrant a full subscription.

Ideally, the publishers would band together and create an actual "netflix of
news" with such packages for the top-50+ publications worldwide. There must be
a huge untapped market of avid news consumers currently underserved by the
market.

Why hasn't it happened? I can only guess that the publishers are weary of
relinquishing the reader relationship to any middleman. I think we're
approaching the point where they'll either have to do it themselves, or these
behemoths (google, fb, Apple) will do it for them.

~~~
mistermann
This idea is great, provided they get together and support one subscription
spanning numerous publications. I'd like to read _some_ of The Economist,
Harper's, Vanity Fair, etc but am not interested enough to buy a full
subscription.

If they don't do something like this, it might be the end of them. The
internet is good in so many ways, but it also causes a lot of problems.

~~~
intended
Its already the end of them.

The WSJ, venerable and Wall street lauded (as in everyone reads it), got
bought by Murdoch's empire.

And Murdoch largely manages to support his empire by selling attention
grabbing material.

Its long since over.

Buying individual articles will be another nail in the coffin - the internet
has provided competitive advantage to people focusing on hacking click and
attention. The best way to do this is to play to the gallery and the human
hind brain.

People act more frequently on their emotions than they act on their reason.

\----

Worse - people are already building products and apps that use
behavioral/skinnerian reward schemas to keep people engaged. So all the high
minded discussion is redundant - the NYT cannot write an article which
competes with attention heroin.

~~~
ENGNR
People do make the conscious decision to consume more wholesome experiences
than heroin every day though, even if heroin was in front of them next to
their food/drink/work day.

NYT has already carved out a profitable niche selling access to plain old long
form journalism, it's one of the few success stories

~~~
intended
Thats if people know they are imbibing heroin. I dont think half the people on
HN itself are aware that most mobile games are designed and sold as
differently themed skinner boxes.

What hope do normal people have to even be aware? And That's something
ubiquitous and only recently being questioned and condemned by people in the
industry.

Awareness of the pitfalls of simple apps is an issue. Forget the really
insidious stuff being made by people with the intention to deceive and
manipulate.

\------

Holding up NYT as a survivor is telling.

The websites and newspapers that remain today are a small fraction of the
Print Media industry which was thriving in 1985.

Holding these few existences as successes, ignores the huge survivorship bias
baked into the example.

NYT was already a massive name, and worked very very hard to adapt to the new
medium. It was one of the few magazines which attempted - very early on - to
build interesting HTML/multi media articles. They tried making subscriptions
work, a move widely derided at the time as a sure shot to failure. (if people
forget, once upon a time subscriptions and pay walls were considered sure
shots to failure on the web).

The powers and membership of the fourth estate has been vastly eroded, and the
ability of people to get past a persons defences, or to build an echo chamber
has been significantly enhanced.

The recent American elections were a low throughput event, but it showed how
simply tweeting allows someone to significantly take advantage of (a
particular) group think.

------
us0r
I canceled all my subscriptions. I would happily pay 1 organization good money
for subscriptions to the top 6-10 papers. I'm really surprised they haven't
tried this yet.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Try Blendle[1]. Disclaimer I use their service and like it.

They let you fill your "wallet" with money which doesn't expire, and then they
give you access to a bunch of different newspapers on a per-story basis for a
variable amount of money per story based on the newspaper. So if you were
spending $20/month on a NYT subscription you can put $20/Month into your
Blendle account and read the stories of interest on the Times, WSJ, Post,
Economist, etc and often have money left over. They have a generous "don't
like it and we'll refund your money" which is quick and simple to use (I've
used this probably half a dozen times when the article turned out to be just
fluff). The articles have no additional advertising, render well on mobile or
desktop or tablet. I dropped my NYT and WSJ subscriptions and read them on
Blendle, that has cost me significantly less than the combined subscription
rates.

[1] [https://blendle.com/](https://blendle.com/)

~~~
thedarkginger
Glad you shared. I found OP frustrating in that the core problem of digital
publishing for profit doesn't seem to be the inability to price the content
correctly but rather publishers' inability to deliver a product that customers
would even pay for.

When a Google News search reveals multiple copies of near identical stories
(let's say NYT, a wire service, and a local paper using a wire service), the
value proposition to a user of paying for one newspaper is generally low.

Never made sense to me why the Netflix model (that Blendle seems closest to
cracking right now) was never applied to accessing good journalism in one
place.

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scep12
The TL;DR is that a tech company with enough information about its users could
charge them "dynamically" based on what it thinks they would pay for news.

Should books/music/movies/tv cost more to those who can afford to pay more as
well?

~~~
matt4077
Airlines are notorious for this. One-day return? Business traveller! Hit him!
Searching flights on a Saturday afternoon? Private travel – let's discount.
High-DPI display? Did someone say "discount"? I meant "this counts" – as a
good reason to raise your prices.

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Fej
Until I read this comment section I didn't know Blendle existed. It physically
disturbs me. Literally, as in I have this pit in my stomach.

If it takes off, it will kill journalism, at least on the Internet. I don't
think I'm exaggerating much. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the
like would suddenly have a tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles at
the expense of substantive ones. I presume they would be fact-checked
clickbaity articles, but clickbait nonetheless.

This type of business model is all but certainly not fit for traditional news
content. What do you think will get to the top, top 10 lists - or more
informative but ultimately less widely exciting news stories?

On a side note, L2 did a short Winners & Losers segment about how news
companies made huge mistakes in the online world. It's an interesting little
watch:

[https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc](https://youtu.be/YbolmT6s5Xc)

~~~
the-dude
> tremendous pressure to write clickbaity articles a

Au contraire : if you don't like the article, Blendle has a very fast and easy
way to reclaim your money.

So this will actually encourage better journalism.

~~~
Fej
Users won't do this en masse. They're betting on it.

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chrisabrams
I cannot imagine such a product/feature could exist on the market. This makes
Microsoft's anti-trust issues with IE look like a joke in comparison.

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camillomiller
So if I use a VPN to spoof an IP from a potentially depressed area (say,
Detroit), with this system I'll get a 70% discount on my NYT subscription?

~~~
ryandrake
Presumably at some point you will need to pay, which, if they're smart, is
tied to your real identity, so they'll hit you with your real non-Detroit
price when you log in.

~~~
majewsky
There's a hidden opportunity in there for poor people acting as subscription
brokers.

~~~
ryandrake
Hidden only until the machine learns their pattern.

------
quintin
Related conversation from the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early
product manager Dave Morin:
[https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928](https://twitter.com/moskov/status/831631451011452928)

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amelius
I think Google really doesn't want a closed system (like Amazon) for news. It
is in their interest to keep the web as open as possible. Therefore, I'm
hoping that Google can come up with a good open solution.

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johanneskanybal
In a less static market than aviation people wouldn't put up with it. Also
it's pure evil.

