Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Thursday, May 26, 2005

NYT Select Redux

The Post has a nice piece discussing the move to subscription models by guys like the NYT in recent days. Here's what Nisenholtz says:

"..."For the cost of roughly two and a half martinis, you can have access to the entire archives," Nisenholtz quipped. He took issue with bloggers who predicted the subscription plan will reduce the readership and influence of the paper's columnists. "We expect quite a number of people will subscribe," he said."

You see, this is the point. Martinis don't cost 20 bucks at the bars most people go to.

So either NYTDigital is only interested in having crusty Manhattan and LA subscribe to the NYT digital, or they're out of touch with the price of mass-market substitutes for their content. But I think this is not the real point.

He also says:

"..."There comes a point at which you have to say, 'Where is the value equation?' when you are talking about online media," said Martin Nisenholtz, president of New York Times Digital."

Don't wanna be rude, but I think he's missed the whole point of Media 2.0 strategy.

The value equation is, at the moment, exploding. The hypergrowth of micromedia, subsequent return of ad dollars, etc, etc.

But it's also a fundamentally new value equation - value is a function of attention scarcity, not distribution or retail scarcity. Local natural monopoly dynamics - like those that pushed the NYT to fame in the first place - are about to vanish.

The value equation, I suspect, is very much there; but it's been inverted. This, I think, is the source of confusion for many Media 1.0 players.

-- umair // 9:41 AM // 0 comments

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