The app store economy: an innovative price model for publishers?

December 13, 2010 4 Comments

News behind a pay wall?

News behind a pay wall?

Newspaper publishers suffer for years now. The number of readers is going down – and as a result advertisers are less interested to put an advert in a newspaper. With the rise of the app store economy, publishers have the chance to come closer to a price model that works.

Strategy 1: news behind a pay wall?

In order to generate revenue there are plenty of newspapers who have turned news into paid content. The UK Times experiment with the paywall demonstrates that people say “No, thanks” and click away to another site when faced with a paywall at a news site. Source: The Times UK Lost 4 Million Readers To Its Paywall Experiment

Strategy 2: look at other industries (gaming industry) – The app store economy

The app store economy - innnovative pricing through inn-app purchase

The app store economy - innnovative pricing through inn-app purchase

Since there are loads of buzz within the publishing industry about publishing for the iPad, why not have a look at the opportunities of the app store economy? In the beginning of the Apple App Store, you had free apps and paid apps. After a while, they added a functionality called “in-app purchases”. In-app purchases mean that you can offer the apps for free and charge upgrades in the app – like e.g. in the gaming industry new levels.

Price model innovation newspapers: app store and in-app purchase

Consider this: a newspaper publisher creates an iPad edition. Would it make sense to offer the app for free, allowing everyone to read the entire newspaper on iPad? Would it make sense to limit the free articles to 3 and then offer “in-app purchase options” if one wants to read more? Would it make sense to show a summary of all articles and offer “in-app purchase options” to get the entire article?

We’d love to see publishers experiment with it and see whether the strategy from one industry can be applied to another one.

Filed under Business, Economy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook Questions to impact R&D? On Crowdsourcing.

December 4, 2010 Leave a comment

Facebook Questions will be available to everyone in the US within the next few weeks. Shall this impact the way enterprises handle R&D? Will this mean a boost for crowdsourcing? Can Facebook Questions and Facebook Groups improve business operations? Shall knowledge-workers deploy it to collaborate in an enterprise 2.0-style?

Facebook Questions' impact on R&D: crowdsourcing over Facebook?

Facebook Questions' impact on R&D: crowdsourcing over Facebook?

Global resources – crowdsourcing on Facebook

Corporations can rely upon the knowledge available through every Facebook user. And that’s a lot: more than 500 million active users. Without a doubt, one can find creative solutions for any challenge by addressing this “melting pot of knowledge” named Facebook Questions.

Benefits for corporations

Enterprises can drastically cut their R&D expenses by using the “free knowledge base”. But what’s more, by developing products in co-operation with the external world, the success rate of bringing it to the market increases. The logic: co-creation results in a solution that better matches the problems.

Consequences for individuals

The consequences for individuals are both negative and positive. Individuals have the opportunity to present themselves to tackle global challenges. On the other hand, competition among individuals gets tougher because of the global scale of the resources. In the end this results in better products. After all, the fiercer competition the better the result.

Filed under Business, Society, Software & Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Most influential brands 2010 index: where are the FMCG giants?

December 2, 2010 Leave a comment

We often wonder what the most influential corporations or brands in the world are. To answer this, we need to pass two challenges: how does one define and measure “the most influential”? We searched for a list that could express “most influential”. We believe we found one that expresses this concept: the Thought Leadership index of TLG.

Defining influential as “Thought Leadership”

With the expression “most influential brand” we mean those brands and corporations that have impact on “opinion formers”. Opinion formers are human beings that, through their own actions and attitudes, shape those of others. They reside within several areas, such as business, politics, media, etc. Those opinion leaders often base their opinion upon the expertise available through organizations. Those companies are conceived and labeled “thought leaders” within a specific industry/sector/subject. “Thought leadership” is often cited as a strategy to build trust in your company and products – which in turn leads to growth.

Thought Leadership companies according to TLG

Thought Leadership companies according to TLG

“Most influential brands 2010 index” aka “TLG’s Thought Leadership index 2010”

The TLG index lists the “Thought Leadership” top companies aka “the top influential brands”. We believe that the TLG index is based upon a valid method: in-depth conversations with opinion leaders. We don’t have information on who exactly were the “opinion formers”, so one could question whether researcher selected “genuine opinion formers”. Let’s assume they did and analyze the list.

List trends: no FMCG concerns & dominance of web-based corporations

Have a look at the list again. There’s not a sign of FMCG concerns such as Unilever, P&G or Nestlé. On the other hand, relatively new corporations with web-focus seem to dominate the list (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon).

Do these FMCG groups realize they are not conceived (“decoded”) as thought leaders/influential? Do they need to deploy another communications (pr) strategy? Are they not striving for thought leadership? The latter is hard to believe. Let’s see whether they’re in the 2011 top list!

Filed under Business, Marketing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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