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Twitter has announced a new program for online content, which, of course, they claim is a great deal for publishers. It will allow publishers to charge a fee to read a single article.
The catch here is the same as it always is with all tech platforms. The publisher gets a dime, and the tech platform gets the customer information.
Is this a good thing for publishers? As a general rule, no, but it depends on whether the publisher’s business model depends on getting the customer’s information.
For example, a book publisher generally does not get any information on the reader, so something along these lines might work for a book publishers.
A magazine publisher relies more heavily on getting the customer’s information, although there are exceptions: newsstand sales and that sort of thing.
When I say this is generally not a good thing for publishers, I mean for publishers whose revenue model depends on getting the customer’s information.
Most publishers are trying to convert website visitors into customers. Sometimes they do this with a free e-newsletter. The publisher provides valuable content in exchange for an email address. In other cases, they use a paywall. The visitor gets some number of free views.
The publisher’s strategy is to increase engagement with content the user values so the user believes it’s in his best interest to subscribe.
What does Elon’s proposal do to this model? It gives the reader an opportunity to read the publisher’s content with no commitment. That undermines the publisher’s paywall strategy – and the publisher doesn’t even get the reader’s information.
By the way, nothing prevents the publisher from charging per article if he wants to do that.
There might be some friction in that transaction. The reader might have to create an account with the publisher, or with some payment mechanism he hasn’t used before. It would be so much easier for the user if he just had one account that he could use for any content on any platform. And that’s what Elon is banking on. Twitter users will set up one account to pay for content on multiple publisher platforms.
That is better for the reader, but it’s not better for the publisher.
If Elon wanted to make this a better deal for publishers, he would not only pay the publisher a dime for the article, he would also provide at least some of the customer information. Maybe even only an email address.
The trouble I have with all these sorts of programs is that the publisher is getting chump change for his content, it’s undermining his own funnel strategy, and the person who wins – that is, the person who gets the customer relationship – is the tech platform.
