Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: News sites to migrate to e-commerce?
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 6/19/2000; 9:13:41 AM Topic: News sites to migrate to e-commerce? Msg #: 17899 (In response to 17898) Prev/Next: 17898 / 17900
First step is to get the fans in the loop. This is what I want to pitch to Salon. Letting their readers have salon.com domains. Then set up a scouting system to find the really good writers, and promote them. Where there's an interest in product oriented stuff, we would act as publisher, and sell products that were responsive to what the users were writing about, if they were writing about products. Even people who are writing about esoteric stuff, with no commercial angle, have to meet "f2f", so there's definitely a commercial angle even for that stuff. The Salon Convention of 2005 would fill the Superdome.My prototypical example of this is a Linux Server publication run by users. We would design the server software we want, and then once someone makes it, they could sell it to us. I've been wanting to have a serious business discussion about this with the big Linux hardware vendors, VA, Cobalt, IBM, Dell, etc, but have been very busy with SOAP and RSS and web editing tools.
I guess the net is this, there's a lot to do! It's great that Seybold and Forrester are spreading the gospel. The value is in the readers. Forget ad-based business models. Let the users run the show. Kick back and be facilitators, teachers, publishers.
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