Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Newspapers need to get a clue - quickly

Re: Newspapers need to get a clue - quickly

Stuart MacDonald — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:42:52 -0000

Look, I'm not saying that I've written the How To Make Money As A Newspaper In The 21st Century book (though if anybody'd like to pay me to ;-)), but CLEARLY cutting off a valuable, free sourch of reach is not part of paving the road to success. I mean, imagine if GOOG had similar services focused on aggregating content completely relevant in other categories. Many folks would be lined up to pay to be there.

Oh, wait, that's paid search.

-- Stuart

Re: Newspapers need to get a clue - quickly

Mathew — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:29:30 -0000

I agree, Stuart. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, to tell you the truth. I think maybe Google should call up the WNA and say "Fine, we won't index your stuff any more. Have a nice day," and then see how long those newspaper sites lasted. It's like that moronic idea someone raised a little while back of getting magazines and all kinds of other dead media and having them create their own little walled garden so they could "compete with Google." Give your head a shake, boys.

Re: Newspapers need to get a clue - quickly

Stuart MacDonald — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:18:36 -0000

Okay, let me make sure I understand this. The, arguably, principal source of most inbound traffic to any site on the 'net has a powerful tool that's all about delivering eyeballs to content producers *for free* and the content producers want no part of it?

What the &^$* !!! Were these people born on the sun?

Are they somehow going to be happier when they are having to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for off and online marketing, plus paid search and portal placements to pull some miniscule fraction of the traffic that they used to have handed to them on a platter?

This is a joke, right? Please tell me it's a joke, because pretty much everybody else in every other consumer category is already paying, in total (lemme check the numbers...oh ya) BILLIONS for the *exact same service*. Gimme a bloody break. These kids need to get out more.

-- Stuart