What is the value of a website

Interesting things are starting to shake and move in the online world, well actually that’s been happening for 20 years now, but for the purpose of this article, I’d like to stick to a general comment on today’s websites.

There seems to be three core types of websites, those that provide information, news, research material, facts, figures and numbers.  Those have those that advertise something, companies, services, small businesses, big businesses, they all sell some real and tangible. And lastly those that allow you to do stuff, sign up, get a news letter, write a blog, tell people what you’re doing and, generously I might say, try to help organise your life, calenders, online email, that sort of thing.

So – what’s the problem! the first two categories are fine, these consist of people that either want to share their information or provide a genuine service through the supply of products and services.

The Interesting area is the third group, these are the people and companies that want us to use their services more than any others. I’m not mentioning names yet, because I want to get to the bottom of the mechanics of this.  The core issue with these websites is of course that they want to make a bit of money, nothing really wrong with that either.

BUT and it is a massive BUT – the problem comes because we already PAY – we pay to get on-line and often we pay quite a lot, we pay the Internet Service Providers, BT, Orange, Vodaphone, AT&T etc… and in return these companies provide us with unlimited access to the web? Unlimited that is until someone asks you to pay extra for their service.

The correct analogy here is like buying a magazine and then being asked to pay for the articles on top and afterwards.  Of course we don’t like it.

Now for some names.  Rupert Murdock wants to charge for reading websites like www.thetimes.co.uk, but we don’t want to pay, of course not, we’ve already paid to get online.  I have to mention Net Neutrality the principal of ‘all-websites-being-equal’ that is currently under threat, of course we don’t want to pay for premium content, or restrictive access.

SocialGo – is an online ‘Facebook’ type service, they don’t supply anything tangible, just the ability to set up your own private network, but they believe customer will be prepared to pay for a premium service, and they will, but only for a limited while, essentially people don’t want to pay and that is because they have already paid.

If Facebook charged it’s users, we’d see the whole thing collapse, Twitter, this article suggests half of Americans have dabbled with a Twitter type service and Zero would be willing to pay.  Come on they’re right, it’s not worth money, I can neither drink, eat, wear or play with it.  There’s no manufacturing involved.  There’s no tangible benefit to paying.  At least with my ISP I assume they put a copper wire into my house.

So what’s gone wrong. Eessentially, what you have on today’s Internet is a group of people happy to share their information (usually us consumers), they you have a bunch of companies wanting to sell us stuff (groceries, books, stuff) and then you have this odd little world of people who think they can make money out of nothing.

Hootsuite – you’re the prime example… you develop and idea, it’s a good one, investors think there might be a buck in it and give you ‘not-inconsiderable-amounts’ of money.  You build 500,000 user base and POW you decide to cash in.  It’s just not right.  You haven’t ‘done’ anything.  Nor will the millions of other Hootsuite ‘wannabes’.  It’s because you have missed the point.  You’ve fallen for the Murdock trap, you think because the service is good, people ‘need’ it.  But they just don’t.

Freemium is really the ‘economic’ model at work, I actually love the guys at Hootsuite, it’s my clients that will suffer not me (either by paying or not using the service), but the concept of developing services, giving them away and then charging at a later date.  It really is like letting people buy the magazine and then charging for the content.

So re-track, people pay ISP’s for their internet access, they are happy to share their information with others (personal websites), they are also happy to allow companies selling tangible goods to advertise to them, it’s part of the research. It’s the third group of people that think they can sell a digital product for a monthly sum that does not actually ‘do’ anything for the buyer.

This group needs to seriously re-evaluate their entire thinking as it’s this group that is going to suffer as the Internet moves forward, it is also this group that are going to seriously devalue the Internet as they try to dominate and ensure their services get the best coverage (Google?).  In short because they are the most desperate to make money (to repay their loans and because they have no bricks and mortar to fall back on) they have the most to lose.

We as consumers need to be wary.

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