Fred,

Sometimes when I read your work I get a little scared because it is like you are reading my mind. It gives me such pleasure to see my thinking justified and you are giving me great credibility with my partners.

I have been thinking about advertising as a method of monetization and agree with you that it is the way to proceed but what do you think about 'scarcity' of advertising? Do you feel that this scarcity exists or will impact monetization efforts in the future or do you think that there is so much advertising that is available to transition over to web services companies that there is nothing to worry about for years to come?

My feeling is that there may be some scarcity in advertising now and that is why you are seeing some Web 2.0 businesses fold. I have no real numbers to back this up though. I also feel that if this is the case it is probably cyclical and that there will be a rebound as new advertising services and sources come online. The result will be that web services that follow your (our) thinking will see great growth in ad revenues and I, for one, will be a happy man.

- Doug Kersten

Posted by Doug Kersten , January 30, 2007 09:55 AM

While I can't say that I'm scared, I do agree with what you're saying ;-)

Content delivery will be the key, and it won't matter what the service is. Whether it's your favorite videos on YouTube, or someone interested in buying your products - RSS and other forms of delivery will ultimately win. People are lazy, and delivery solves that problem.

Best Regards,

Robert Dewey

Posted by Robert Dewey , January 30, 2007 10:13 AM

Fred,

I wasn't able to attend your presentation, only read the pdf so apologizies in advance if this comment is out of place.

As the price of information goes to zero (slide 6), wouldn't the supply tend towards zero as well? What economic incentive do individuals and companies have to produce high-quality information (music, books, research reports, etc) if it will be pirated and otherwise openly distributed? Without robust incentives at the creation phase, what will there be to distribute? Doesn't higher quality information have a way of finding attention by itself at the end of the day? I'd think that YouTube's annoucement of rev sharing would re-enforce the value of information creation?

Thanks, I really enjoy reading your thoughts,
Nikhil Garg

Posted by Nikhil Garg , January 30, 2007 11:00 AM

Hi Fred,

Great presentation -- hard to believe that some of these "controversial" ideas go back to 1971.

I think this is a very timely follow on to Brad's recent post. It's almost as though you guys actually talk to each other ;-)

One question/comment on Price Elasticity: I think you need another variable: quality

As the price of information tends to zero, the supply does indeed become infinite. But it is at the expense of the average _quality_ of information.

The only way to avoid the quality tending to zero for the individual trying to "consume" information is through new/better/novel search, aggregation and organization tools.

Just my $0.02, and I hope it's worth at least that much...

Posted by fewquid , January 30, 2007 02:42 PM

The SIIA and Scribe Media were kind enough to post the streaming video of Fred's keynote at: http://www.scribemedia.org/2007/01/30/siia-wilson/

Posted by Barry Graubart , January 30, 2007 11:23 PM

Hi Fred,

I agree with poster Robert Dewey, as the price of information decrease I believe that web services and all information and content providers must create incentives for the creation of information and content to continue. Thus, as quality information and content is created, the value of that information hopefully increases and price and value.

I really believe, that the next wave of web services that will make it, are those the meet all of the former prerequesites of usefulness, simple, user-friendly,structurally sound, and ultimately create value, but the new web services must create incentives for users to create the content that is being used to create value and sell to external users.

Thanks Fred

Posted by Chuck Williams , February 1, 2007 03:06 PM

Fred,

I believe your presentation hits the nail on the head, especially in the online recruiting industry where 5.9 billion dollars was spent on content, which now can be easily feed for free. Big vendors will now have to figure out how to monetize, while smaller more nimble companies are already ahead of the curve.

Finally, evolution.....

Thanks again,
Chad

Posted by Chad Sowash , February 1, 2007 08:10 PM

Interesting thoughts and perfect for the UK recruitment market.

The employer will continue to produce 'quality' content i.e. jobs as they need people. However, what they do not want to do, is to pay to advertise if there is no result of any value. Google Base is a great example of free advertising as is a search engine, if only job boards would offer the same.

Getting the data distributed is getting cheaper and cheaper, presenting it to Google to be indexed and searched, sprinkle on some adsense/Adwords, RSS feeds etc and you have a fully hosted, virtually zero cost job board that generates cash with almost no overhead.

Fun ahead.....

Posted by Peter Gold , February 2, 2007 01:32 PM

Fred,

Enjoyed the discussion I was especially interested in something you said at the end in response to a question. From my blog write up...

"He ended the session with a potentially more interesting theme which related to tagging and content descriptions. In answer to a question about the potential power of social nets and the attendant tagging possibilities he suggested that we shouldn’t have to tag information at all; that is, content should be adequately described for us. The questioner stated that ‘publishers are good’ at describing their content. Wilson disagreed, confirming (to me) that publishers are definitely not good at tagging or classifying their content. His comments confirm for me a belief that intermediaries that insert descriptors, subject classifications and other metadata to improve relevance and discovery will play an increasingly important role. Personally, I do not think the battle has yet been joined that will determine one provider of standardized meta-data within specific product or content categories. (Some players have clear positioning, take for example Snap-On tools purchase of Proquest’s Business Solutions unit which opens many intriguing opportunities – if you like car parts)."

Having been in the bibliographic database business for many years it is interesting to me that the data describing the data is finally getting some respect.

Regards,
(personanondata.blogspot.com)

Posted by Michael Cairns , February 2, 2007 06:47 PM

Hi Fred:

First timer, enjoyed your video presentation. Personnaly I thought the most important comment was "How do you get your information". The follow-on is of course, is the information reliable.

Monetization Value has always been driven by the perceived quality of the information. I don't expect that to change. The key will be, as it always has been, how and who will determine the value.

A previous poster stated and I also agree that people are lazy and therefore I believe that all things video will soon dominate information dissemination. The value will be in the credibility of the presentation, whether or not for entertainment or information. The same way society at large values information will apply digitally and so the key to monetization will be in the delivery.

Posted by Grant Arbuckle , February 2, 2007 09:53 PM

..."His insights are not as applicable to the financial services business. In financial services, particularly the transactional side, proprietary data is king and many exchanges and trading platforms are charging more for the distribution of data. The decision of NYSE Arca to discontinue free “real-time” depth of book data for equities to the large portals is the most public example of the monetization of market data. The bundling and selling of analytics data by NASDAQ/NASD is another.

Mr. Wilson’s talk included a number of interesting insights…including his prime belief that RSS feeds are the ”new plumbing” of the next evolution of the information markets."

http://shopyield.com/blog/2007/02/05/take-my-rss-feed/

Posted by Cate Long , February 5, 2007 01:49 PM

Fred,

You know I'm a big fan. This was another great presentation. Thanks for sharing.

One thing...I was watching the video and wanted to click "email this" to a friend. It'd be nice if it was a pop-up or a new window/tab since it reset the page and the video re-started, causing me to ffwd.

Not a huge deal, but just one thing to help make things viral.

Posted by jeremy , February 6, 2007 11:37 AM