why pay?

so plenty around here say the public won't pay for web subscriptions for newspapers when there are free alternatives for news, then why do people pay for membership to something like classmates.com when you have facebook for free? or why pay for match.com when there is craigslist personals?

 

A. classmates.com was there first, but really... do you know anyone who pays for classmates.com? I don't, and I'm guessing Facebook is killing it.

B. People are more confident someone they meet on match.com is less likely to be an ax murderer than someone from Craig's List.

C. Much as everyone likes to ignore this, paying for web subscriptions has been tried, repeatedly. If it worked, they'd still be doing it.

 

Facebook is getting killed financially though.

 

Yep, Facebook is a great example of why you can't make money charging for widely targetted content. There will always be companies willing to do it just for the eyeballs with the assumption that they can make money later.

In a few years, when Facebook realizes they are never going to make money, someone else will take their place.

 

I read an article lately saying that Facebook could be a big money maker. They have probably the biggest database for consumer research currently available.

 

iTunes-like charging of content is the way to go for newspaper.

Charge a nickel or a dime for a story and a quarter for the day's news. Maybe $4 or $5 for the month. We gotta get the impulse buyers.

 

Literally hundreds of businesses have tried to make micropayment work since the internet began, and *only* iTunes works, and they don't pay people to produce the content.

 

The thing about charging for content now is, do you really think the greedy fucks who run newspapers will respond to an increase in income by actually paying a decent wage and hiring back people who have been let go?

 

We're more worried about finding some hail-mary way to save the jobs that are still there and the wages that are still there. It *can* get worse.

 

And here I thought this was a rhetorical question ...