I go to my beloved feed of AP stories — rediscovered after it disappeared — and when clicking on a headline, instead of taking me to a random newspaper client, as it has been doing lately, it took me to a plain AP page that asked at the bottom whether I wanted to “purchase this AP story for reprint.” Hmmm. I haven’t seen that before.
I click and go to a page branded “Valeo Intellectual Property” and find a few options: commercial use, nonprofit use (for certified 501c3s), and personal use, to wit: “Anyone is free to make one copy for personal use. This can include one photocopy, one printed copy, one email copy, or posting an HTML link (without text or photos). This includes use by a student for an academic purpose. Click on the article title above to go back to the article. From there, you can print (or use) the content as described here.” Note that it doesn’t say anything about quoting but I choose to take that as good, as not trying to restrict fair comment.
Now I click on commercial use and this is where it gets a bit quizzical. It offers me reprints, custom reprints, PDFs, all of which is rather standard. But then, here’s the punchline, it offers to charge me to link to the story on their site: “A formatted HTML page hosted by Valeo IP that you can link to from your web site. The Instant Web E-print is guaranteed for the duration of the license. The link is available immediately.” They’re charging $175 for three months and $500 a year for this privilege.
Huh? They’re charging for a link. And because AP content disappears off the web like dew in the day, what they’re really charging for is an almost-permalink. (Sadly, most newspapers’ content also disappears behind archive walls; the grand exception is what Dave Winer got The Times to do and what Aaron Swartz maintains now: a wormhole into the archives for links to individual stories.)
This AP thing is slightly more than that because it puts your brand over their story — that’s how it’s a “reprint” — while also not allowing you to put the story on your own site. But in any case, it’s no way to get rich online and it points out one of the many ironies of the old news business in the new world.
I understand the very tough position wire services find themselves in with our dynamic, distributed world today: Once they serve one client and that client serves one story, they serve the world. And when all sources of news can be seen at once, the value of any one source declines.
When I spoke with a bunch of French journalists about blogs and all that, the AFP man asked me what the business model for wire services is and I had a simple answer: I don’t know. I told him — as I also told the AP — that it is foolish and even suicidal to do what the AFP did, pulling itself out of GoogleNews’ aggregation; in the AP’s case, if they did that, they’d be taking traffic away from their own members. And meanwhile, Reuters is ramping up to create a consumer news service, which will love links and traffic to its pages and ads. I link to news off the AP RSS feed all the time, but I wish those links would not die. In this game, the one who gets the links wins. The one who takes his marbles and goes home behind the fence loses.
And what happens when the wire services and their affiliates aren’t the only creators, collectors, and aggregators of news? Then it gets even muddier.
Just remember this: In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value.
As you suggest, there are enough news sources that different models of linking will be tried. The free, permalinks will tend to win out. This shift will accelerate once the NY Times sees the wisdom of this model, which will happen because ad dollars continue to leave that newspaper for the web. To keep what they have, the paper will offer deals where ads in the paper also buys ads in their online edition. The online ads will appear in Google-like context with stories for as long as traditional (paper) ads are running. Advertisers will love this, since for no additional money they will get new traffic driven to their web sites. But this scheme will only work if all the NY Times’ content is permalinked at all times.
The sooner the Times does this, the better, since blogs will have to re-educate themselves re links to the Times. Such links are of course now often avoided because they’ll only go bad.
Who grants more authority, the sources like Reuters, AP, or the blogs that generate public interest and dialogue by using those sources?
Jeff,
I agree with everything you say, but it’ll be n easier sell once someone does come up with a reasonable business model. Saying you don’t know what a sucessfull model is and then claiming that he who links, wins makes the latter statement seem like one of faith. Of course, until someone does start allowing permalinks, this is speculative at best. Someone needs to try some things – and be prepared to adjust and then readjust. But in the long term I think your faith is well-placed.
Jeff
Don’t have an answer to your bigger question, but the company you mention first, Valeo, is closing down, for some of the endemic reasons you allude to : http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_06_30.shtml#014573
I agree that trying to charge for news content online is not the smartest business model, but I’m not so sure about the importance of links. Posts and the comments they contain look to me to have a very short lifespan – most of them shuffle off the page pretty quick to be replaced by new posts and new comments. Who wants to read old news? Or comment on it.
And when it comes to gaining popularity for your blog by linking with everyone else’s blog on the planet in the hopes they’ll link back to you and Technorati and others will notice how ‘popular’ you are and anoint you with an official ranking which will hopefully attract even more links … okay, I can see that, but there must be a pretty strong temptation to temper what you say so as not to ‘offend’ anyone and heaven forbid, start losing links because you’re suddenly no longer considered ‘cool’ for that bang on the money post that really wasn’t too smart ‘politically’ and have therefore violated the unwritten terms of a sort of mutual admiration society and must now be considered ‘outside the pale’ of whatever mutual admiration society it was that originally welcomed you in.
In my view, a blogger’s independence is their most valuable asset, assuming they’ve got something interesting to say. And it’s the quality of the debate that is found on their blog, specifically the conversation they inspire, that makes them worthwhile, whether we agree with all of the points of view or not.
Don’t know how we can measure something as arbitrary as ‘quality of debate’, but I think that if you’ve got that on your blog, people will know it and it will not necessarily be based on the number of links you’ve got. Whether technorati et al deigns to notice you won’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys. If you’re marketing it, maybe by using other methods that do not depend on technorati etc and are probably more effective anyway, people are going to hear about you and come to your site to check it out, maybe even contribute. Of course, if you don’t have interesting debate, or maybe only have it now and then, I could understand falling back on the links and tags thing, which might explain part of why we have so many blogs not worth spending any time on.
It’s possible I’m not understanding links too well and since I’m planning a blog, I’m open to hearing more about how they’re useful.
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[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] influence than other pages competing for attention around the same topics/keywords. Jeff Jarvis summed it all up nicely in 2005 “In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis says In this new world, links are currency. Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value. [...]