‘More Features’ Won’t Save a Dying Business Model
I love being in the software industry. So many things are being reshaped right now and I get to participate in my own small way. Here’s a vision piece from some European newspapers describing the newspaper of the future.
News+ concept live from Bonnier from Bonnier on Vimeo.
The problem is, there’s really nothing new here. Yes, this seems great. Basically go down the checklist of every feature that the internet and sexy hardware devices have, and leverage them all to make a digital newspaper. Tablet? Check. Roaming across devices? Check. Video. Check. Photography? Check. Discussion with the writers? Check. Alerts? Check.
I get it. I get it.
I’ve been on many projects where my team’s job was to come up with videos and prototypes exactly like this one.
Here’s the problem. Maybe a better newspaper, a digital newspaper, a newspaper that leverages all of the features that are sexy on the web and touch devices today isn’t what anyone wants. Or certainly isn’t what anyone is willing to pay for to the point that would support the infrastructure necessary to create this kind of production. Maybe the problem that newspapers are facing is intractable. Maybe there simply is no solution and they have no choice but to die.
It’s not the news business that’s dying. It’s the newspaper business.
The same seems true of record labels. Their economics just couldn’t last in this new world. People still love music. People still pay for music. It’s just the economic structure of record labels that is becoming extinct.
Adding more features is easy. I get asked to do it all the time. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen a situation where even the greatest collection of features can overcome the fact that the core of the experience isn’t something people want (or want to pay for).
I’m not saying that finding those core experiences is easy. It’s not. I just feel bad for all the effort and resources that went into this video and countless other visions like it. The blogs and websites I read, the google alerts I use, the social networks I frequent, all give me this experience already today. I don’t need a newspaper to deliver it to me in one package.