Yesterday as I was catching up on a few recent daily articles from Ben Thompson's Stratechery newsletter, I was struck by the following sentence: Profit comes not from right but from worth.
Ben was talking about why he immediately ponied up the cash to maintain full access to Bloomberg's journalism. I almost said digital journalism, but since their an exclusively digital outfit (I think) I decided it's too early to get tautological. Anyways.
I totally get both his point about something needing to be worth something to elicit an exchange for it, as well as why he paid Bloomberg money: they write damn good articles that are worth paying for.
It also got me thinking of avc.com, Facebook, and Cent.
As I've said before, I think Fred's blog and comment section is one of the most valuable free resources on the internets today. The 5% of blog visitors who drop into the forum of debate below Fred's daily posts would surely pay something to both Fred and his commentariat if for no other reason than just to give back a little of the value they have taken until now. I know I would.
Facebook provides a global phonebook, replete with white and yellow pages. Although the phonebook wasn't must-read material when we used to have it delivered to our house when I was younger, it provided an indispensable utility (for a time) and paid for itself - it still does believe it or not - with revenue from ads. Each and every person pays for themselves in some small way just being a Facebook user and thus adding additional value to the network of other users and Facebook itself.
Cent, at least for now, is more like avc.com than Facebook. It's similar in scale (obviously) but also in terms of the value that the discussions between and amongst users generates. As of today, tens of thousands of dollars has passed through Cent, and that will only increase. That is proper value, and it's built into the experience from the beginning; there won't be some separate paywall bolted on later (nothing against paywalls, it's just that we are talking about two fundamentally different experiences).
The big question is how best to capture that value, but aside from that it's crucial to see where that value and the profits therefrom are derived from: People.
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