Paid professional content on the web and mobile medium - courtesy Mr. Rupert Murdoch

If Mr. Rupert Murdoch has his way, the vast expanse of FREE news content on the web will soon be available at a price. BBC recently reported his plans and an extract of that story can be read @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8186701.stm.

Let’s investigate the threats and possibilities!

Historically professional content was always been available at a price, irrespective of whether the brand paid for its broadcast or consumers paid to receive them. With the advent of new medium especially the web medium, content broadcast has been democratized and the share of voice is longer limited or localized. Well! We all are aware of that paradigm shift. Today professional content in small fragments of various sizes and shapes are available on the web on multiple locations beyond the control of creators / publishers or even the content aggregators.
They now lie on private pages and domains purely at the mercy of the user to be either exploited in whichever form or let free in pure original shape.

Now if look at the channel of content flow and the multiple hands that a professional content goes through is growing exponentially by the day. So no recipient at any time will ever know the number of twists the content may have undergone before it reached him. Surely, the veracity of a so called virgin professional content is now under big doubt. It’s like playing ‘Chinese Whisper’! There is a hell and heaven difference in the original word spoken and the actual word that the last player gets to hear from his immediate neighbor.

Hence for a revolution of that sort where News Corp’s efforts to bear fruits in terms of charging a fee can work, only if.

- The content is rich, unique, well researched and well presented. Hence it needs to rank high on the index of differentiated content
- Truth always wins over something that is preposterous or blown out of proportion
- It’s extremely necessary to ensure that first layer of subscribers are solid personalities or enterprises who help spread positive word about paid professional content on the web
- Most important is to have a solid knock back strategy to negate repulsions from the intermediary channels and its carriers

Well! Having said that, however there seems to be a strong predisposition towards Mr. Murdoch new strategy and here it is why! UK’s weekly political magazine, The Spectator has already created an iPhone app to download its news at a cost. Read the story @
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/the_spectator_app_paying_for_p.html

Google's own Funnel

Google’s Sidewiki has kicked up some storm recently as many users feel that it is a blatant infringement to user privacy. Some feel that the forced deep insight into user behavioral information is unwarranted and that users are caught unawares as the terms and conditions seem to be one sided. Some users feel that Google has mis-sold the product for their advantage.

However the die-hard fans of Google are split between two ends. Those who are addicted to Chrome feet that they are left out as the Chrome version is yet to be launched. While those who are willing to converse (aka Contributors) have been totally enthralled by this new wiki. While for those brands / websites who are not so social media savvy or those who are not so willing to open up their websites to unwarranted comments may feel challenged. They may even turn their backs to Google for some time but will very soon wake up to omnipresence of the wide and deep ‘black hole’ called social media which will eventually gobble them up unless they bide with it.

The push cum penetration strategy however, is a master piece, as far as Google is concerned as this provides them with hitherto unexpected flurry of conversations teeming with pure first hand user preferences and dispositions. This information will go a long way in their efforts to know the web users more and more.

Simultaneously, Google launched something called Google Caffeine. Google Caffeine is touted to be a much more refined and robust search engine with more specific user focused results, optimized, sharper and better. It’s something that all marketers look for when they pledge their money on Google. Surely, it’s another wonderful concept to rake in the Dollars for the Kings of the Search World.

The two new properties from Google seem to meet the demand and supply quite smartly in the customer delivery funnel. Google Sidewiki on the wider side and the Google Caffeine on the narrower side.