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On Fri, 7 Apr 1995, Bill Densmore wrote:

> Rex: 
>     
>     Thanks for your reponse to my online-news query about how publishers 
> view the net. Your last graf caught my interest: "The paper media don't 
> have the resources tocover microeconomies which can be predictably 
> volatile, and therefore unprofitable . . . . " I think I understand your 
> point: That because they use centralized presses and can't retool 
> quickly, they can't track rapidly changing news for very targetted 
> interest groups. But they can -- if they use the Internet. Most of them 
> are having trouble recognizing this however. Newspaper publishers, for 
> example, don't seem to WANT to to the micropublishing that would be 
> possible with web sites. At least many of them. The big fellas are or 
> will try it, I suppose. Why do they resist?

They don't.  Dow Jones, S&P, Rueters, ADP, and Quotron are examples of 
electronic publishers who carry substantial microeconomies.  The biggest 
challenge is to get all of the micros defined for each of the 20,000 
stories/day coming through the feed.  The other big challenge is 
delivering it to the thousands of users who will search it or be alerted 
by it.  For a stock broker or corporate trader for a pension fund, 
missing a story about a microindustry such as an announcment from 
Wellfleet that will affect the price of Cisco, or an announcemnt from 
Oracle that will impact the price of Sybase, can be a million dollar loss.

There are many industries and companies which are growing at a rate of 
over 100%/year.  Imagine getting in on the ground floor of Federal 
Express, Microsoft, Novell, or Informix?  Any one of these would have
split and doubled several times.

Sometimes the information is used in more interesting ways.  Lawyers 
watch news feeds to identify possible class-action suits.  Doctors, 
Engineers, and Accountants are in professions which change daily.  
Project managers from volunteer groups to Federal Contractors must 
constantly be watching for the breakthroughs that will facilitate their 
projects.  On several occaisions, I have scuttled development efforts in 
favor of a newly announced commercial or GPL product.

> I thought you'd be interested in the explanation of Newshare, below. Any 
> thoughts? 

Yes.  I had been trying to get Dow Jones to do this for 2 years.  Your 
pricing is too uncertain.  You need to give the subscriber some 
certainty.  If he knows he can get 2000 pages for $20, he will page to 
his hearts delight.  If he knows it will cost him 1 cent/page, he will 
try to count every page.  Sell in bulk.  Sell the increments in bulk as 
well, the next 20,000 pages could go for $10.  Start with these lower 
rates and adjust them upward as your market establishes itself.

The user should define the value of the work, not the commercial 
publisher.  You should have "click servers" that will proxy information 
to the PD services.  If the user wants to clidk through 2000 pages of 
usenet, you can increase the distribution per click to commercial services.

Pages should be defined carefully.  One great way to upset a user is to 
have him download a picture and get charged for 100 "pages".  The user 
who gets a large text story may also feel uneasy about paying for a 10 
"page" text story that contains no pictures, or when he selected no pictures.
 
> By Bill Densmore

I'm saving this for my own notes.
> and columnists, is being launched in April. Potential content providers 
> may view a demonstration of this service at: http://www.newshare.com/

	Rex Ballard.

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Sun Apr  9 23:42:33 1995
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