As we all painfully know by now, the new economy emperor had no clothes. Steve MacLaughlin, in “Taking the ‘r’ out of free,” identifies three distinct groups of online content:
- Conglomerate content, like AOL Time Warner, packages content from various properties owned by the corporation. Users pay for access to the network on an all-you-can-eat basis.
- Generic content, like Reuters, is commodity information such as newswires and financial information. As the information is further commodified, the price is driven lower and lower by the providers.
- Niche content, like Corante, has enough subscribers to stay viable.
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