Crack Pricing and iPhone Apps.
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Similar crack pricing models should be applied to applications for news services. Charging for the Globe and Mail application on the whole wouldn’t go over well, despite the excellent job that Spreed Inc did putting it together. But charging $.99 a month, for full sections that aren’t included in the general app, might hold enough value to make money.
You could argue that I’m talking about the old concept of micropayments. I often say I’m against micropayments as a model, because they have never worked, and most proponents misunderstand the issue: it’s not about charging people an amount below the threshold of notice - it’s about charging people in a method that is below the threshold of notice.
[…]Micropayments as a solution for news are worrisome, because the newsmedia are unlikely to develop a platform that allows charging in a manner below the threshold of notice. For the moment, iTunes offers one.
The news industry has yet to fully realize that if you just offer your web platform as a re-print of your print platform, you fail. Use the power of the web and it’s ability to sort content, relate content, and let content determine its own importance and you suddenly create value - value that would significantly raise your threshold of notice.
