Well it seems one of my favourite sources of information and debate on web and technology issues online is closing down – Guardian Technology section. While print features will still continue in a slightly adjusted format and many of the key writers will continue blogging, the main section itself will cease to update with new info by the end of this year. It seems therefore like a good opportunity to say goodbye to the section, and a well done to those that have made it so useful and interesting over the 26 years it has been running.
One of the ways that you can continue to access the service in its full glory however, even after the conventional online and print sections cease to be available, is via the Guardian’s technology iPhone app, costing just £2.39. This allows users access to pretty much most of the services the section has provided for for free online in recent years, and in print for nearly three decades.
How connected are these two moves I wonder? The Guardian, like all mainstream newspapers in the UK is suffering the twin attacks of both declining ad revenue and falling circulation. Monetising online content is as key for them as anybody else in this media sector. How to proceed in a manner that sees newspapers and magazines continue to make money is the single central issue facing the industry, and some might remember Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments on the debate when he stated that publications of his such as the Wall St. Journal might start charging for content. Well, ‘that’ll never work’ we all said – because users would always find free info somewhere (unless absolutely everybody made the switch all at once, and standardised prices etc etc). But perhaps we were hasty in this assessment…
For example, we probably didn’t discuss enough the various nuances of charging for content which are on the face of it much more viable than the simple ‘pay to access our site’ method. Take the Guardian’s move to charge for an app for handheld devices, which grants access to all the section’s content.
Of course, the revenue model is different – users will only ever pay a one-off fee of £2.39, but in essence this represents quite a significant sum once you consider that Guardian Tech Twitter feed has 1.5 million followers: if even half of them buy the iPhone app (or its alternatives for other handsets, which will surely soon also appear on the market), then that adds up to some enticingly healthy revenue stats for the section.
The jump to seize upon the monetary potential in markets such as this though comes at a price – which will be inevitablly to reduuce reach and impact with online audiences, which though lacking in monetization potential (online ad spend revenue has never looked like being adequate to get papers out of the negative cycles they have been experiencing) are nonetheless a sign of prestige and public service.
Who knows, maybe the timing of these two moves by the Guardian tech team is mere coincidence, but in a way it doesn’t matter, because the issue of using handheld apps as a way of more effectively monetizing online content remains a central and interesting one facing the industry. The downside is that it comes at the price of sacrificing the free for all, advertising revenue-powered, online newspaper. Or maybe this is an isolated move and the majority of newspapers will not follow suite… but somehow I think not. Here’s how I see it by this time next year:
-Most major publications divide their supplements into corresponding apps, not only for iPhone but also other devices. Hence Sport, News, Travel, etc all become available for free once a user purchases the app to follow the content.
-Users buy the apps from papers and sections according to what they are interested in, changing the way we consume ‘traditional’ newspaper content (i.e. a sports fan could now regularly read the sport sections of multiple newspapers with the corresponding apps – which would rarely happen with print issues, since no-one buys four papers a day…).
-The quantity of free ad-supported content online gradually diminishes on the websites of major newspapers eventually giving way to the handheld device access of ‘newpapers’ through apps, as the new norm in five or six years time, finally once again combining the portability of a print paper, with a newly workable revenue model and the exciting new content delivery possibilities of the web…
The beauty of this prediction is that if it does turn out to be wrong, hopefully by that time nobody will remember my foolish sci-fi inspired rambling here in 2009….
Dejan Levi