Forget Content, the Money's in Services
The "free vs. paid" debate surrounding Web content continued to dominate the discussions at the Jupiter Online Media Conference here Tuesday with a growing sentiment that the money lies in providing services instead of standalone content. On a day when Yahoo's chief solutions officer Tim Sanders hailed the virtue of "selling the experience," panelists argued that content could be a valuable hook to guide paying users toward add-on services. Jason Devitt, CEO of the popular city-guide application Vindigo said his company found a gold mine in providing a fee-based service around content, even though it created no content on its own. "We're not in the content business. We create no content whatsoever. But, we create value by getting information to users in a convenient place at the most convenient time. That's what people are willing to pay for -- the service," Devitt told the gathering. For $29.95 a year, Vindigo sells location-based access to content on PDAs but the content is provided entirely by business partners. "That content is already available for free but, because there is value in the service, people are paying for it. It's the service that's valuable, not the content," Devitt argued. Since going the premium route on October 2001, Devitt said the company was able to migrate 60 percent of freeloaders to the paid version. [Full story: Forget Content, the Money's in Services - InternetNews]
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