I'd actually say that this
article in the Chicago Tribune and the
debate referenced in the article misses the point - at least as it pertains to media companies. The article states:
A new report from Gallup pollsters, "Blog Readership Bogged Down," cautions that "the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year."
But, the question is not, "Is Blogging software a new medium / going to revolutionize media?". Instead, it is: "how will the increased ease of self-publishing affect our world?".
In other words, how are companies smartly:
- Aggregating this content
- Interpreting this content
- Evaluating this content
- Delivering the best / most relevant of this content
- Monetizing this content
Blogging = Self Publishing
Blogging software is merely self-publishing / content management software - so, an easier, more dumbed and at the same time feature rich version of FrontPage for a specific purpose. We've seen similar things on the "store launcher" side, with
eBay's ProStores,
Yahoo! Stores, etc. all coming to market, and shopping carts like
OS Commerce coming online.
It's pretty clear that if you lower the barrier to participating in a certain activity, the number of participants will rise. So, more people are publishing content (whether their own store or their own editorial or other) today than in the past. Once you've got more content / more choices, though,
the key question becomes how to find the right / most valuable content.
Self Publishing Example
eBay to eBay ProStores is an interesting example of the phenomenon of self publishing. With eBay, it's easy to sell an item - you don't need a store, don't need to accept credit cards...pretty much the only thing you need to do is have something to sell. Apparently, as the growth of eBay somewhat demonstrates, there are a lot of people with something to sell. Now, for people
who have been selling many items and who are looking to put up a storefront which they can market through many channels, not just eBay, eBay introduced ProStores. To me, this is similar to going from commenting in a messageboard to publishing your thoughts in your own blog -
not everyone will make this leap, but some will.
Who makes money from ProStores? Well, obviously the merchant has a chance to make money from it's goods, and
eBay makes money because the merchants pay a subscription / management fee. But also
Google,
Shopzilla and any other site that helps consumers find these new merchants, and then
AOL or
other sites that distribute Google and Shopzilla's listings to an already aggregated audience.
Conclusion for Media Companies
In looking at ProStores, the value that is generated by each player in the equation is in the following
order
- Google
- Shopzilla
- AOL / eBay (unclear which margins are better here)
- Merchant (highest risk here)
So, the questions asked at the beginning really just equate to this: how do media companies move away from being near the bottom in value generated towards being at the top? This question is relevant for reviews, ratings, recommendations, listings, etc - any of the stuff that people may
publish online using these new tools.
As GotAds points out, you can see items that accept GBuy by looking for those tagged 'xyzzy'.
Some info about the process:
1. It's obviously and clearly intended to go after PayPal and eBay's Buy It Now business.
2. It seems pretty straightforward
3. Integration into GoogleBase is pretty good.
You’ll note, as a user, when you click on the "Buy" button, you just enter in credit card info. Google then will make the payment to the seller. Unclear what Google’s fee structure is on the seller side - I guess we won’t know that for a little bit.
You’ll also note that, once you’ve got an account (w/ credit card info already inputted), you can just sign in to your account and confirm the order. No credit card info is needed, just your account info.
Finally, there’s this:
Overall, reasonably slick, but not overly so. Still, doesn't need to be for people to use this. GoogleBase hasn't really been a factor yet in the listings business...maybe free listings with payments will help it make some real noise.