December 26, 2007

Mindpark invests in Sourze, or Thoughts on why people publish online

Mindpark has invested in Sourze and now owns 10 % of the user-created web magazine. Talk about old, and extremely profitable, media meeting new, and in search of a good business model, media.

My main issue with Sourze has been the weak incentive for individuals to, ongoing, create high quality content and publish on Sourze instead of in their own blogs or in other media. (Exposure, traffic and money would be three relevant incentives in this case.)

One problem is that Sourze's current traffic is not large enough to deliver a significant boost in readership compared with writing a blog. That is something an integration, light or tight, with the newspapers who owns Mindpark could help solve.

In some cases Sourze could give the writer better exposure than having a blog. Especially if some smart integration which make use of the allure of (paper-based) newspapers is done.

Or Sourze could use some of the money raised to pay contributors. That would surely be an reason for some to write, even though I imagine both traffic and exposure being stronger incentives.

2 comments:

Jardenberg said...

In the past it was Sourze OR your own blog. I think, and hope, that will change. In one way or the other. Look att theissue.com for some ideas.

Henrik Torstensson said...

If Sourze would become a mix of a content site and an aggregator (like Knuff/Intressant), it would probably be more valuable to readers and more attractive to writers.