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March 28th, 2010 by Wadds

How do you make money from online news content?

We’ve seemingly spent the past six-months obsessing about online business models for traditional media. That was the view of Emily Bell, the Guardian’s director of digital content, speaking at The Guardian’s Changing Media Conference two weeks ago. She’s spot on.

But with Murdoch’s move to erect a paywall around Times Online from June we’ve now seen almost all of the broadsheet newspapers set out their stall for generating income from content online – and all are taking very different approaches.

Here’s a summary.

As the Financial Times has demonstrated success requires a mix of business model and distinctive editorial – particularly when the BBC and others provide so much news content for free.

The attitude of broadsheet publishers to aggregators and search is less clear. The Times recently started blocking clipping agency Meltwater and aggregator NewsNow, but for now at least it is allowing Google in.

Google aggressively counters the claim that it is a parasite feeding off traditional media.

Speaking at the Financial Times Media & Broadcast Conference at the beginning of the March, Google UK’s managing director Matt Brittin said that the search engine was a virtual newsagent that sent four billion clicks a month to online news web sites.

So which model will work? There’s no way of telling. If I knew the answer I’d be seeking out an opportunity to invest behind one of these emerging business models.

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March 18th, 2010 by Wadds

BBC web site set to become content hub; iPlayer 3.0 to incorporate social features

BBC Online is set to become the access hub for “every bit of content” from the BBC according to Erik Huggers, director, BBC Future Media & Technology. Viewers will be able to personalise their services and share BBC content on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Huggers was speaking at The Guardian’s Changing Media Summit today.

Daily Telegraph tech and digital media correspondent Emma Barnett interviewed Huggers after his presentation and reports that social functions will be incorporated in iPlayer 3.0 which is set to be launched shortly.

“We are close to launching the third version of the iPlayer in beta which will have many more social functions embedded within it,” said Mr Huggers. “People will be able to bring their Facebook friends onto the iPlayer so they can share what they are listening to or watching with each other more easily.”

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May 12th, 2009 by Wadds

Telegraph shows content is king

Good content will always attract eyeballs whether online or offline which is why there will always be a role in the media for people that have the ability to generate editorial content.

In the wake of the MP’s expense debacle, daily sales of The Telegraph have risen by a reported 90,000 from April’s average readership of 810,000 per day and the paper has seen its brand pushed far and wide across the media as journalists second source the story.

The challenge for The Telegraph is that this level of interest could only ever be sustained by an ongoing stream of similarly high profile content.

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