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NY Times Goes Free
September 17, 2007
Two years ago I discussed how the New York Times would start charging for content. I gave the plan a 25% chance of working and said the company would change course in 18 months. Here is that blog entry.
I was wrong on one point. It took 24 months for the company to decide to go free.
What I have learned from my own experience is that people will pay for financial news online and independent product reviews from the likes of Consumer Reports. Other than that it is tough to get people to pay. This is extremely true of general media where millions of blogs exist which cover the same news and thousands of other news sources compete for attention.
I consider the New York Times to be a premium site on the internet and if they can’t charge, the question becomes, who will. It may not matter because all the studies I have seen point to a healthy online advertising market with much room for growth.
The question worth asking is when will they start sending out the refunds to those who paid already? Didn't they learn anything from Apple? ;)
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SCO Bankrupt
September 17, 2007
In the 1980s I was MIS Director here at TMCnet. In case you aren’t aware I introduced desktop publishing to TMC around 1986 or so and we were one of the first publishing companies to standardize on PCs instead of Macs. At the time I saw no long term future for Apple. Boy have times changed.Around 1990 I also upgraded our computer system from a proprietary Zilog-based UNIX to an Intel-based UNIX. At the time the two major players were SCO UNIX and Interactive Unix.
SCO was more expensive but the company’s sales team convinced me that SCO was spending on the marketing and would be around for the long haul. I believed them because their ads were everywhere at the time and Interactive was much more quiet.
Over the years we migrated away from UNIX and became a Microsoft shop. In the last seven years however a bunch of Linux servers have appeared throughout our office.
I suppose our move to Linux and not UNIX is part of the reason a company like SCO declared bankruptcy. It is more complicated than this because you may be aware SCO declared war on Linux, IBM and many companies choosing to use Linux. Unfortunately for SCO, the company lost the lawsuit and now must compete on its own merits.
This is obviously almost impossible to do when you compete against such a popular product which is also free.
As SCO plummets – potentially into oblivion I suppose another era has emerged in the computing world. In this new world, you give things away and charge for services such as support in the case of Red Hat or outbound calling to the PSTN in the case of Skype. A company like Digium makes money from training and other value-added services.
As markets evolve, companies must evolve as well or they face extermination. It is a shame to see SCO go but they took a chance by suing and they knew it was a risky move. They bet the farm and lost and will now just be a lasting memory in the minds of the few (like me) who used the OS to run a growing company in the eighties and nineties.
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Nokia Siemens Networks Interview
September 17, 2007
I have a special treat for my readers today; A podcast interview with none other than Harald Braun, Head of Convergence Operators Customer Business Team at Nokia Siemens Networks. I know you remember the terrific interview Harald gave regarding similar topics last year. In today’s interview, Harald had some great feedback on the state and future of IMS and the the combination of the service provider divisions of Nokia and Siemens which is now Nokia Siemens Networks. Finally we discussed operational fitness and the need to foster innovation in IMS.
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