The Inquisitr » Wall Street Journal

Apparently Fwix Has Invented Revenue Sharing With Bloggers

Duncan Riley — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:17:46 +0000

Hyperlocal news startup Fwix is one of the smart new breed of hyperlocal players finally making a go in a fabled yet long unprofitable space, and yet apparently story telling now extends to their latest payment idea.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Fwix is “going where Google and other giants haven’t: sharing revenue with the people who write the news” by “agreeing to split revenue with the people who write the local information.”

It gets better: from the CEO: “One of the things I want to change in the industry is how we pay people that are producing the content.”

Yes, apparently this revenue sharing thing is new and radical, a massive shift in what has been done before, because revenue sharing is such a amazing idea that it has never been tried before.

Except that it’s one of the oldest payment models in blogging and has been used by every one from two man blogs through to huge concerns for years. I should know, I was a co-founder of a VC backed blog network that was founded in 2005 exclusively on revenue sharing for…wait for it…bloggers.

The sarcasm aside and the obvious lack of research from the Wall Street Journal, the original Fwix release doesn’t actually claim credit for revenue sharing. Somewhere between the release and the Wall Street Journal, the interesting part was overlooked until later in the article: Fwix’s new AdWire service is not just rev sharing with their bloggers (nothing new), but with sites that embed their widgets and send them traffic as well.

I can’t recall having previously seen rev share applied to people running widgets before, although widgets used for advertising purposes (with money changing hands) isn’t new. I’d give a review of the widgets except for two things: Fwix has perhaps the most detail-less info pages I’ve ever seen for a service like this, and every site they claim is running the widgets don’t show the widgets when I visit them. On the last point I’m thinking geotargeting, given there’s a dirty great big blank space on The DailyKos where I’d presume there would normally be an ad…or in this case, the Fwix widget.

To be fair to Fwix, it’s more likely that the Wall Street Journal is following in the proud tradition of its parent company with sloppy reporting, but likewise the record could have been corrected.

Marriott Scaling Back Free Newspaper Service

JR — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:32:18 +0000

Marriott is cutting out its automatic daily newspaper delivery to guest rooms, becoming the first major hotel chain to scale back its print paper service.

Marriott says it’s seen a 25 percent drop in newspaper demand by guests. “I visit more than 250 hotels a year, and more often than not, I’m stepping over unclaimed newspapers as I walk down the hallway,” says CEO J.W. Marriott, Jr.

Starting this month, you’ll be asked at check-in whether you want to receive the paper outside your door in the morning. You can opt to get USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, a local paper, or nothing at all.

Marriott says it was the first major hotel company to start offering automatic paper delivery about 25 years ago.

Wake Up, WSJ: Paid Content Is Dead

JR — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 21:29:17 +0000

The Wall Street Journal will launch its first new design in six years Tuesday, but its biggest flaw will still be present: The paper will continue to charge for much of its content.

The Journal’s new look may appear more modern, but the principles behind it could not be more antiquated. In our information-driven era, the subscription-based news service appears ostensibly misguided and misplaced.

Consider this: Only 5 percent of the WSJ’s average Web audience pays for a subscription. Ninety-five percent of the visitors, then, are non-paying. Yet, the Journal is restricting its most unique (and thus highest traffic potential) content to a tiny fraction of its audience.

Imagine how much more overall traffic the site could pull in if those non-paying visitors had the added value of that enterprise content within the wsj.com site. Instead, they constantly have the experience of clicking onto something that they can’t read, getting frustrated, and then going elsewhere to find the information. More site-direct traffic, of course, equals more advertising dollars — and with the kind of high-paying advertisers a brand like the Wall Street Journal could secure, that means a lot more cash ultimately flowing through its coffers.

Information these days is free for the taking, and trying to fight it only hurts media companies in the end. Unless Lars Ulrich is on the Journal’s advisory board, I find it hard to comprehend why the paper is reinforcing stereotypes about old media’s lack of understanding of new technology and 2.0-style thinking. In an era when so many newspapers are struggling to stay alive, this type of non-adaptive thinking just seems counterintuitive.

I guess the one good thing, though, is that the new design does more clearly mark the subscription-only content — which will make things far easier for those of us with the handy knowledge of how to access it without paying. (Hint: Headline. Google News. Search.)

WSJ sourced Obama skinny quotes from Yahoo Message Boards

Duncan Riley — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:06:13 +0000

A journalist at the Wall Street Journal has been caught sourcing quotes for an article on Barak Obama being too thin to be President from a Yahoo Message Board.

In the article Too Fit to be President?, Wall Street Journal political correspondent Amy Chozick endeavored in the best News Corp tabloid style to create a story around the rather bizarre notion that voters wouldn’t vote for Obama because he was too thin, saying that “some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.”

In the piece, she includes the quote “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” and originally didn’t attribute the source. Sadly No reports that the source was a Yahoo Message Board where Chozick actually asked for negative comments using her own name:

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

Some of the early responses

Easy to see that for some people in the world, totally meaningless drivel is what keeps them occupied and up at night.

The good news is that these people probably do not see the real problems in the world – living in the one they are in.

Hopefully, there is something that can legally keep you from voting – or remember to vote on November 20th – you will miss the rush!

les1954

Re: Is Obama too skinny to be president? 15-Jul-08 10:21 pm
Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.

onlinebeerbellygirl

I’ve added the emphasis in the last response, but it’s the exact line used in the Wall Street Journal. Yes, Onlinebeerbellygirl is the source.

The Wall Street Journal has since amended the article to include where the comment came from, complete with correction statement at the end of the post. Besides the entire premise of the story being bizarre and trashy at best, is the mainstream media suffering so much from budget cuts and cut throat competition that one of the most respected papers in the world has to resort to sourcing quotes from people known as onlinebeerbellygirl on Yahoo Message Boards? It doesn’t bide well for the future of quality journalism, does it.