Content must be freed. Not necessarily free.
Two weeks ago, at the Like Minds Conference we listened to Guy Clapperton bemoan free content, and then last week the twitterverse lit up with commentary as The Times announced their first paywall subscribers figures, which could be seen as good/mediocre/terrible (select your bias here). However, I am more interested in a different type of “free”.
It is best put by Razorfish’s white paper titled Nimble (by @rlovinger – a MUST READ), which posits that content should be certainly free as in libre, but not necessarily free as in gratis. This rings particularly true after a few conversations last week with major publishers that have major difficulties in exploiting the value of their huge archives, due to technological constraints.
Given the big news yesterday that TechCrunch has been acquired by AOL (for a reported $40 million, including earn-out), I thought it would be worth laying out some of the key lessons that this blog can teach us. Most of these are as old as media itself, but that’s the point: successful new media businesses MUST employ the eternal principles of good publishing, but be through-and-through ‘digital’, with low costs, a nimble approach, and an understanding and love for the digital community.
