Online Business Models are Hot, Hot, Hot

Online business models

Sweden's largest tabloid, Aftonbladet, lets go of 100 employees, leading to a discussion whether you can charge for online content or not. Joakim Jardenberg from Mindpark argues that it isn't possible (in Swedish) while ex journalist/crisis comms guru Paul Ronge isn't so certain (in Swedish) – all you need to do is use more and innovative business models.

Business weekly Veckans Affärer's Mikael Zackrisson writes a truly interesting story (in Swedish) saying that media bosses are thinking wishfully when hoping that consumers will pay for news. Zackrisson also argues that the online news media business models are old fashioned and that they are complaining about things like copyright rather than innovating.

The Identity Challenge

I personally think the business models issue is one thing, but that the identity challenge could be more important. One reason social media is killing news papers is their strong idenity. The identity is created by a mix of personality, passion and authenticity – three pillars upon which most popular blogs, forums and communities are built.

This means becoming more focused and more niche, allowing the journalists to display more personality. This is something many news papers can't handle, since it means turning over the brand to the journalists.

At the moment many Swedish news papers focus lots of energy on staying alive, which includes innovating add-on products such as DVD's and books to be sold together with the papers. While this makes money it is not their core business, which is news. News (and analysis) is their business and it should be their identity, and it should be what they should innovate. And this includes how this news is delivered.

Chunk it

For example, I am an RSS subscriber to the Expressen (Sweden's second tabloid) football news, which should tell them more than enough about my football interest. I have never received a single message through that feed. No ads. Nothing.

Somewhere I read about Expressen producing a weekly football magazine, something I'd love to pay for and get news about. With a direct link to people interested in football – why isn't this used? I am aware this is a tiny part of what future business models should look like, but is it really that hard to implement?

The web is being chunked in smaller bits and the news papers' strength is quality content. Chunk it up and serve it the way users want it, while monetizing it. The adtribution model where ads are embedded in the news looks like a great way to do exactly this (via @Hampus).