This proposal is strongly influenced by my internship at Yahoo! Buzz, a social news website. It is not as well-known among the technology community as Digg or reddit, but boasts more impressive traffic numbers. From the very beginning, Buzz decided to market towards “average” Americans, not just the ones living in Silicon Valley. Although I cannot reveal specific revenue, I can state that the impact per team member at Buzz was very high.
I think AJE can adopt a very similar product and strategy for the Middle Eastern market. Imagine a social news site sourcing news from Al-Jazeera [1] targetted towards the Arab community. There are no serious contenders in the market today: Al-Jazeera can easily capture the first-mover advantage and secure a vibrant community.
There are several factors that make this model particularily appealing.
First, a website similar to Buzz would not require a large team to produce. Indeed, a plethora of code already exists publically. Additionally, technology is dropping in costs and development tools are improving, yielding pound-for-pound more efficient technologists. Just over the weekend, I managed to create a mockup. Costs and risks have never been lower.
Second, the potential impact is large. As stated above, there are no contenders in this market. Compounding this, community is seen as a competitive advantage. Once active on a site, users have high sticking costs. It becomes a natural monopoly that yields recurring revenue.
Third, it synergizes with Al Jazeera’s newsroom. One of the most difficult challenges for Buzz was simply signing up publishers and obtaining high-quality content. This would be a moot point for Al Jazeera. Additionally, the traffic and ranking numbers for articles would provide essential statistics that reporters could use to tailor their stories.
Fourth, Al Jazeera already understands the Arab audience. Marketers at Buzz were always puzzling over how to market to people unlike themselves. This continued to be a huge source of contention for the development and UI team. Al Jazeera would be able to develop this application quickly and provide internal dogfood feedback.
As I’m sure you know, news organizations today are in a desperate rush to figure out how to monetize. Although Al Jazeera is not under such pressure, becoming a case study or poster boy as an organization that gets it is surely on its radar.
I believe that the rush to monetize will eventually reach a point where executives realize that you cannot simply sell content online. You need to sell experiences. Paywalls and subscription models will fail because content itself has very little value to netizens. What they primarily value is convenience, entertainment, and community. Only through this trifecta do they judge content.
AJE shows signs that it understands this new digital world. It already supports CC and recently released a blogs section.
This proposal takes things one step further. I believe the journalistic organizations of tomorrow will look increasingly like the technology companies of today. The major point of this initiative is not just to develop a website: it is to develop the in-house expertise to lead the next decade.
\1 Partnerships with other Arab news organizations should be on the roadmap, as well.