The 'free' vs 'paid-for' battles intensifies (please send £1 if you enjoy this)

Further to my previous post regarding the BBC's swipe at Murdoch (something strangely missed by the media), I now read that News Corp (and not just them) is meeting with Microsoft, presumably to put together some deal that delivers paid-for content through Bing.

As Rory C-J from the BBC rightly says, this will really give journalists the opportunity to see how much people value their work. Actually it is the other way round, it will help people put a value on how much they want to be informed and how much they care on the reliability of data.

Google wants to map the world's information intelligently. Firstly it wanted to reference it (search), now it wants to connect it (discover). When Google Dashboard was announced, I saw many horrified faces from people realising their entire life's history of search could be accessed and looked at. I think Google went a step too far with this and could ultimately impact its brand credibility and ability to 'win' this fight.

People are uncomfortable knowing that a company knows more about themselves than they do. It's one thing for Tesco to apply this to a narrow field of life, such as shopping (personally I don't have a card, but if Tesco decides that my regular wine choice could be well matched with a new cheese, that's useful information), but to apply it to all forms (which now operate through the Internet) is the privatisation of big brother.

So we have some strange bedfellows in this battle. On the one side, the 2 big proponents of the 'free': the BBC and Google and on the other, the proponents of 'paid-for': Microsoft and News Corp (publishers).

Clearly making predictions is merely a way of highlighting ignorance, but I'll have a go. The answer does not lie in whether people will pay in as much as how they will pay. It is the payment model that is crucial. I might say that about £250 per year is about right for information from the media, but I don't want to make 1000 transactions for it. I make very few 'information only' transactions, but buy it along with other shopping. This is a cultural shift.

People will pay for reliable and up-to-date information, how many and how much is unknown. But to find that answer, we need the business model and the technology. I see a gap for an intermediate start-up to smooth the gap between provider and purchaser, a kind of online shopping mall for information where you hold the equivalent of a 'John Lewis' card and can pay for a multitude of things on the card, but only make monthly transactions.

BBC Embraces SEO, a swipe at Murdoch? (Katie Price; Thierry Henry)

I see today that the BBC has changed it's headline and web address policy to improve its SEO. The blog from Steve Hermann explains that many people come to the BBC through 3rd parties - no mention of Google, of course, but it does mention Twitter, RSS and personal recommendations.

That makes no sense. The story is about SEO, so the above list is nonsensical and has no relevance in this piece. Changing the policy is just about search engines. Now, why might the BBC want to place its news higher up a google search?

The Murcochs (James and Rupert) have taken swipes at the BBC and 'free content' recently and News Int is considering de-tagging its content from Google. Cue BBC shake up to improve SEO.

It's probably a good thing (and whilst its at it, it can sort out its own search engine) and the bbc has probably relied too much on recommendations and loyal visitors to the site.

However, I don't think it will substantially change anything, that is unless News Int does 'ungoogle' itself and we are ramping up for a fantastic war of the 'free' vs. the 'paid for'. One which I'm sure the Murdoch's want in order to destabilise the BBC, but it is certainly interesting that the BBC seems to be fronting up.


You can read the Blog from Steve Herrmann here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/11/changing_headlines.html


Of course, there is no Katie or Thierry element to this piece, just hoping to maximise my SEO in the style of 3am.co.uk