Content Matters

Why Daily Deals Are So Damn Hard (and what can be done about it)

The Daily Deal market has taken some big blows in the past week.

Last week, PrivCo's scathing report on LivingSocial claimed their financing round was at a $330 million valuation, down nearly 95%.

This week, of course, saw Groupon stock down more than 25% on disappointing earnings and a horrendous Q1 outlook. A day later, Groupon (GRPN) CEO Andrew Mason was forced to resign, or, as he jokingly put it:

“I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why…you haven’t been paying attention.”

So, is that the end of the Daily Deals market? Not really.

The Daily Deals market is really, really hard for several reasons:

• There's no barrier to entry
• There are few, if any, economic benefits to scale 
• Merchants have had, at best, mixed results
• Consumers are trained to ignore emails, particularly if the initial deals are not compelling

So, why is there a future for Daily Deals?

There's still a huge opportunity in the hyperlocal market. Local merchants need ways to drive foot traffic to their restaurants and shops. The old models of yellow pages, newspaper ads and classifieds don't work any more (and in many cases never did). A regular web presence is important when consumers search for you by name, but doesn't help you get their attention with special offers. 

At the same time, consumers want deals. They've been trained to look for discounts, ecoupons and other deals. 

So, what might a successful Daily Deal product look like?

It's probably small (or small-ish). One of Groupon's failings is that it tried to scale quickly to dominate the space. In doing so, it put too many sales rep feet on the street and put too much pressure on merchants to do deals that really didn't make sense. If you had fewer reps focusing on higher quality businesses and trying to understand how to make those deals work for both merchant and customer, you'd have a better product. That product might have lower margins and smaller revenues, but it might be sustainable.

It's probably not just an email blast. I never see Daily Deal messages as Gmail is good at sorting them into my \Promotions folder, which I rarely view. A Daily Deal offer might work better if it were worked into my workflow. For example, when I use Yelp, it might let me know that a restaurant in a cuisine I've looked up previously is now offering a deal.

It's more personalized. Yelp knows a bit about me, as do Foursquare, Netflix, Seamless and Gmail. If you know the sports that I follow, the cuisines I eat, the areas I visit (work and leisure), the music I listen to and more, you can create much more compelling deals for me.

The winner in the Daily Deals game will be the company who can leverage analytics and personalization in the ways that Amazon has done for ecommerce. Understand what I want and you can solve my needs and those of the merchants. And there's still a pretty big pot at the end of the hyperlocal rainbow.

 

Related articles

Groupon Fires Its CEO, Andrew Mason

Breaking: Andrew Mason is out as Groupon's CEO

PrivCo may be wrong, but LivingSocial's CEO is still sugarcoating this round

LivingSocial CEO Fires Back And Calls Damning Report 'Fiction'

Yahoo: Much Ado About Remote Workers

Some companies are just lightning rods for controversy.

In the past week, since the release of an internal email indicating that Yahoo would no longer support remote workers, there have been hundreds of articles and blog posts (I guess this adds one more) and tens of thousands of tweets and comments.

Of course, controversy is nothing new for Yahoo. Once the darling of online media in its infancy, Yahoo (YHOO) has attracted an outsized amount of criticism in recent years. Of course, the company has made some dumb moves, so much of the critique is warranted. But this time, I think it's a bit silly.

Is Marissa Mayer's new policy right for Yahoo? 

As an outsider, it's really hard to tell. Every company has its own unique culture. I've worked for a company which was completely virtual. We had employees in dozens of cities around the globe. And, from the start, we put in place tools and processes to support a global, virtual business. As a result, we had great communications, both internally and with clients, and smooth handoffs on the engineering side.

I've also worked for a company that was centered around an in-office experience. Communications there were often informal. Some of the most important decisions were made in hallway discussions between the cofounders and members of their management team. If you were out of the office that week, you might have little chance to weigh in on that discussion. Is that good? Well, it worked well for them.

The key is that every company's culture is unique. There's a reason why many successful startups use a single, shared space. It encourages collaboration and information sharing in ways that don't always happen with digital communication.

One important thing to note from the Yahoo discussions is that it seems that only a small percentage of their 11,000 person workforce works remotely. The policy has been described as affecting "hundreds" of employees. If 95% of your employees work in the office, it's likely that the bulk of your processes and systems are aimed at supporting that environment. Those who work from home may miss critical information or be unable to contribute in the same ways that they might if they were in the office.  If it were 25%, not 5%, it might actually be easier to support. The communications processes and tools would have to be in place to make it work.

And let's keep in mind that many tech companies discourage remote working. According to Google CFO Patrick Pichette, as noted in All Things D:

‘How many people telecommute at Google?’ And our answer is: ‘As few as possible’ … There is something magical about sharing meals. There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’ 

From some of the fallout, it's clear that the impetus for this decision was, in part, due to frustrations with the overall culture at Yahoo. Kara Swisher notes that "Mayer has been particularly irked about Yahoo parking lots that are slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty by 5 pm". 

I hope that's not the primary driver of the new policy. I don't believe you'll create a more productive workforce by simply forcing people to spend more time in the office. Yahoo needs to attract the types of employees who will be passionate about what they do, and not those focused on doing as little as possible.

If I were launching a new company today, I would learn towards the virtual model or a hybrid virtual/office mix. The advantages are great and the disadvantages are modest, provided you design for it. But let's cut Mayer some slack here. She's still in the early days of trying to change a culture in efforts to turnaround a company facing deep challenges. She needs to make the decisions on how to revamp their culture and their business. The scorecard for her effectiveness should be looked at over several years and not quarter-to-quarter or based on specific policies.

 

 

image of Marissa Mayer courtesy World Economic Forum.

image of Patrick Pichette courtesy C2-MTL

Three Things LinkedIn Should Change Today

LinkedIn (LNKD) continues to strengthen its position as the de facto source for business networking. The company continues to beat Wall Street expectations and the stock has performed exceptionally well.

At the same time, the company continues to innovate, adding new features and improving the core platform. LinkedIn's latest mobile and tablet offerings are showcase examples of how to reinvent your products for the needs of the mobile user.

But there are a few potential clouds on the horizon. And there are three things that LinkedIn should change immediately in order to maintain its credibility.

And credibility is everything for LinkedIn. Unlike other social media platforms which are purely social, LinkedIn is about business. And for business users, the value of LinkedIn comes from knowing that its social graph is reflective of the real world social graph of its users. LinkedIn is all about separating the signal from the noise.

Here are three things that LinkedIn should change immediately, to maintain its value proposition:

Make it slightly harder to connect: I know. This goes against all logic, especially for mobile users. But LinkedIn has lowered the bar to connecting. It used to be that almost every LinkedIn connection request came with a note. Something like "Hi, Barry. I enjoyed speaking at the abc conference and look forward to following up with you about our tablet initiative". Great. Even if it's not someone I've worked with, I can immediately remember the context and decide if it's someone whom I should allow into my professional network.

But today, many of the paths that LinkedIn provides to connect with contacts don't even provide that option. Upload your address book or click on this group of people and a generic request automatically goes out. So, if I can't remember the context of how we met (or if we even met), I'm refusing your request. 

This is the same problem that services like Monster.com (MWW) created with "1-click" to apply for a job. Prior to that, job applicants typically had to write a custom cover letter to apply. So, they wouldn't bother applying for jobs where they did not meet the required skills. But with 1-click to apply, there's no penalty to applying for jobs they won't get. So, hiring managers were flooded with job spam - unqualified applicants and Monster has become largely useless. 

LinkedIn runs the risk of becoming useless noise if it makes it too easy for people to try to connect to everyone.

Make Skill Endorsements Meaningful: Endorsements can be very powerful. But as presently implemented, they're fairly meaningless. LinkedIn is pushing endorsements pretty aggressively. As a result, users are often encouraged to do a 1-click endorsement of multiple contacts for "default" skills that others have chosen for them. It's also become a courtesy issue. If you endorse me, I feel obligated to endorse you.

There are a few ways in which LinkedIn could quickly improve Endorsements.

First, flag or identify endorsements from people who worked with you (relationship as Colleague or We've Done Business Together). I trust those more than the random guy you met once. Amazon marks reviews by whether the reviewer purchased the product through Amazon. This could work in a similar manner.

Second, require endorsers to add a sentence or two to the endorsement. If I need to think for a second, I probably will only invest the time for people I would honestly endorse. Third, only allow users to endorse one contact at a time. The whole idea of presenting a slate of four contacts with predefined skills to endorse just makes this a joke. Make users work a little harder to endorse someone and the endorsements will have significantly greater value.

Clean up the stream: The LinkedIn news stream has gotten a lot more cluttered lately. Some parts of the stream are great. The Twitter-like shared links and posts work well. The "new connections" are fine. The endorsements are weak for the reasons described above. But probably the weakest thing is the "say happy work anniversary to Katrina" posts. First of all, they're often incorrect. In fact, I'd say that more than 50% of the ones I've seen have been inaccurate, likely due to the way that someone entered their resume or bio into the system. But seeing a "congratulate Bob on his first anniversary" message for someone whom I know has been in the same job for five years just makes the platform look dumb. Even if it's accurate, it's just noise.

LinkedIn is a great service for business development and recruitment. Their massive database has become a barrier to entry for potential competitors. The company has clearly figured out ways to monetize the platform. Going forward, they need to be careful not to turn their valued network into just another stream of noise. And they can start with the three changes outlined above.

 

 

 

Three Possible Strategies to Support Best Buy’s New Price Match Policy

Best Buy (BBY) announced this week its intention to begin price-matching prices from key competitor websites, such as Amazon (AMZN), Buy.com, Target.com (TGT), B&H, Walmart.com (WMT) and others, for purchases made in its stores.

On its surface, it seems like a smart and aggressive strategy for Best Buy to remain relevant and to discourage its customers from showrooming, using Best Buy to view items, then buying them cheaper online.

Yet in practice, I don’t know how the numbers could work. There’s no way to profitably run a brick and mortar big box retail business that matches the best of online pricing.

For comparison, I just spot-checked a few of Best Buy’s prices.

Best Buy offers a Canon Vixia HF M50 Camcorder for $499. Amazon has the same camcorder for $429. The Epson WF-2540 printer is $129 at Best Buy. It sells for $99 at Amazon.  And it’s not just Amazon. A pair of Sennheiser PX 100-II headphones are marked “sale – see price in cart” at Best Buy. That sale price is $55.98.  But B&H Photo has the same headphones for $43.46.

And those three items are hardly unique. On almost every item I checked, the Best Buy price was 20-40% higher than prices at Amazon and other sites. The exceptions tend to be large screen TVs, where Best Buy is competitive to the best online prices, and certain brands which are rarely discounted, like Dr. Dre Beat headphones or an Apple iPad.

And that experience is consistent with what I’ve seen in the real world. There was a Best Buy across the street from my old office. Any time I tried to buy anything there, I found their prices to be 25-50% higher than the online price. I might pay that premium for an emergency pair of earbuds, but for anything over $25, I found myself ordering via the Amazon app instead, often before leaving the store.

So, how might Best Buy adapt to a world of price-matching? I see three possibilities:

First, Best Buy can hope that while price-matching becomes a useful marketing campaign, customers don’t bother to actually do it in practice. This seems unlikely to me, unless they either make the process too difficult to perform (“let me find the manager for you” or “you just need to fill out this 12-page form and we’ll match the price”) or perhaps deploy cellular signal jammers in all their stores.

The second option is for Best Buy to work with manufacturers to create custom versions of its products for their stores. This is the trick that the mattress industry has used for decades, to make price comparisons difficult. When mattress discounters like 800-Mattress sprang up, department stores scrambled for ways to keep their artificially high prices up. The solution was for mattress manufacturers to create “exclusive” models available to each department store or retailer. So, you can’t compare the price of the Stearns & Foster Delana mattress from Macy’s, as that model is not available at Sleepys or elsewhere.

Might Best Buy try something similar? Could they ask Canon to make a Vixia HF M50BB (or similar) which is only available at Best Buy? That might be a bit more difficult to do across some product categories (I can’t imagine Apple participating) but for some products I could see it. Truly unique offerings would be most compelling, but that's really hard to do with electronics. Home retailers like Target (TGT) can get designers to create custom collections; FAO Schwartz has unique toys that Toys R Us can't offer. But there's not as much flexibility with electronics. Maybe a custom color for a phone or camera, but that's about it. Another option might be to create custom bundles. Perhaps a flat screen TV, a wall mount and HDMI cable could be bundled together into a package that is exclusive to Best Buy. Smart consumers might compare the bundle to the price of the unbundled components, but you won’t have a one-click price check from a barcode.

A third option might be for Best Buy to treat big ticket items as loss leaders then offer private labeled accessories, unique to Best Buy. This is not far off from their current process for large screen TVs. Their prices on these tend to be fairly competitive, as they know people price compare before dropping a thousand bucks on a flat screen. But they hit you up for a $59.99 HDMI cable and a $119.99 wall mount, items that can be purchased for a third that price at Amazon.

If they truly wanted to be price-competitive, Best Buy would make it easy to check competitive prices in their stores. But they’ve actively avoided this to-date. Best Buy actually incubated a startup, Tecca, which offered mobile apps providing detailed information and comparisons on electronic products. The apps included barcode scanners which returned pricing from Bestbuy.com, Amazon.com and Google Products. Yet although they funded it, Best Buy was never comfortable enough with Tecca to encourage its use in their stores. Tecca was shuttered late last year, but could have been the centerpiece of this new “price matching” strategy.

I think Best Buy will likely employ the use of bundles and white-labeled accessories to improve margins, while using price-matching on major items as loss leaders. That approach may slow the showrooming somewhat, but it doesn’t seem like an effective long-term strategy for a profitable business. They can’t possibly sell enough overpriced accessories to support 1,000 big box stores across the U.S.

How do you think Best Buy will handle price matching? Add your thoughts in the comments.

Photo: Best Buy - Champlain Center Flickr/daysofthundr46

Related articles

Best Buy to make online price-matching policy permanent

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5 Companies Who Might Buy Time, Inc.

Today comes word that a potential buyer is exploring the purchase of Time, Inc. from Time Warner (TWX). The Company has three main groups: News and Sports (Time Magazine, CNN Money and Sports Illustrated ), Style & Entertainment (People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly) and Lifestyle (RealSimple, Southern Living, MyRecipes.com and others). According to reports, the sale could exclude three flagship brands:  Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune, which would remain with Time Warner.

Who might the suitor be?

Obviously, there could be a private equity firm lining up to bid, but that’s not too interesting, so I thought I’d suggest some potential strategic acquirers.

UPDATE: The NY Times notes that analysts are speculating the bidder could be Meredith Corp.

That would make sense from the content/titles, and could see Jack Griffin doing it from an ego standpoint, but would be a challenge for them to absorb IMO. Assuming a price tag of $2-3 billion, it could cost nearly double Meredith's current market cap.

Disney (DIS) would make a lot of sense. They have the news (ABC) and sports (ESPN) coverage in place and could certainly capitalize on media and web opportunities around the style and entertainment business.

Hearst would find the titles would be hugely attractive, but absorbing an acquisition this large would be a challenge.  

Conde Nast/Advance Publications, publisher of Bon Appetit, Glamour and Vogue, would be a great home for the lifestyle and style brands, but may find a deal too large to absorb.

News Corp (NWS) is in the midst of splitting itself in two. An acquisition here could diversify that publishing group, reducing its reliance on newspapers and opening up more avenues for digital publishing.

Viacom (VIA) could see this as interesting way to build new video and digital content around the style, entertainment and lifestyle markets in the way that Time Warner's TMZ has found success.

Who am I missing? Who do you think might bid on Time? Add your ideas in the comments.

LinkedIn, Amex Drive Pseudo Viral Buzz

If you're like me, your twitter stream this week was filled with two oft-repeated messages:

• Hurray! I have one of the top 5% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012; and
• #BuyAmexGiftCard25

The first message was driven by a LinkedIn (LNKD) campaign to notify owners of the 20 million most active profiles that theirs was among the "top 5%" or "top 10%" most-viewed profiles. Clicking the link brought you to a page which encouraged you to share this message over Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn:

Hurray! I have one of the top 5% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile/0/066/72a

It's not the first time LinkedIn has taken this approach. In March of 2011, LinkedIn sent an email blast to many of its early adopters showing them that they had been among the first million users to sign up for the platform. For a week or so, we all saw many tweets boasting of users' early adopter status (for the record, I was user number 135,826). 

There's nothing wrong with what LinkedIn is doing, but it does feel a little forced. And by the 4th or 5th time you see that message in your stream, it begins to feel a little spammy. And, of course, for those who bothered to do the math, being among the top 10% of LinkedIn's 200 million users doesn't really feel that special. But LinkedIn knows that rankings and gamification works, and they have been clever in getting users to promote their message.

This week also brought a marketing partnership between Twitter and American Express (AXP) aimed at testing out Twitter-based social commerce (TCommerce?). As you've no doubt seen and heard by now, users could link their Twitter account to their American Express account, then make purchases by tweet. To encourage users to try it, American Express offered a $25 gift card for $15 for those using the process. 

Unlike the LinkedIn approach, where sharing the message was optional, users were required to tweet a message using a specific hashtag #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to start the transaction. This was the way that American Express could identify buyers, but it also clearly was used to promote the message to that users' social network. In order to complete the transaction, users needed to then link their card to their account, then tweet a final confirmation message including the hashtag #ConfirmAmexGiftCard25.

Using Twitter for commerce, and particularly mobile commerce, is interesting. You can tell that American Express was trying to emulate the simple approaches used for fundraising via text message. But the multi-step process felt a bit clunky. Part of that was due to the need to link a card with a Twitter account. I have to assume that the conversion rate, from those who tweeted the initial #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to actually completing the process was probably less than 50%. But apparently the offer is now sold out, so American Express must have achieved their targets.

Twitter and other social media platforms are clearly becoming more commercial. Innovative companies like LinkedIn and American Express will experiment - and that's all good. At the same time, companies will need to be careful not to appear too spammy, as a backlash can come quickly and is likely to spread more virally than the original message.

Related articles

American Express will let Twitter users buy real products with a hashtag

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Don't Judge the Microsoft Surface Just Yet

If the holiday season is any measure, the Microsoft (MSFT) Surface and Windows 8 have been a complete dud. In fact, I saw this headline come across my stream this morning: Sell Microsoft NOW! Game Over - Ballmer Loses.

The article, by Adam Hartung, notes that for the Christmas period, Microsoft sold only 5% as many Surface tablets as Apple did iPads.

To be frank, I’m surprised they sold that many.

This first version of the Surface was aimed at consumers. And why would a consumer buy a Surface rather than an iPad, an iPad Mini or a Nexus 7?

• The Surface runs on Windows RT. It doesn’t run Windows software. Instead, it runs special Surface apps that you can download from the Microsoft Store. And how many apps are in the Microsoft Store? Around 20,000 at last count. Compare that to the one million apps in the Apple App Store.
• Add the fact that the Microsoft Surface does not yet support cellular (3G/4G/LTE) access – it’s a WiFi-only product today. And most of the initial reviews of the Surface were lukewarm at best.
• Even those users who don’t like Apple, or feel Apple is becoming too powerful, have options like the Google Nexus 7.

So the question is not why Microsoft only sold about a million Surface tablets to-date. It’s why anyone would have chosen the Surface instead of the alternatives.

For Microsoft, the goal is not to have the best consumer tablet product. That game is over and Apple (AAPL) has clearly won. Microsoft is focused on the enterprise and I believe that they still have a realistic shot at gaining strong market share there.

The Surface Pro, previewed to journalists at CES, is due for release the end of January. And while it shares a name with its consumer-focused sibling, it’s a completely different product. The Surface Pro has an Intel I7 processor and runs the full Windows 8, just like any laptop or desktop PC. It won’t be quite as portable as an iPad – more like a MacBook Air in size and weight – but it will be the first touch-screen tablet computer to run a full computer operating system.

The Surface Pro will be a compelling solution for many enterprise IT departments. While the BYOD trend has taken hold at many organizations, most large enterprise companies still have limited or no support for user-owned devices on their networks. That’s why you still see so many people carrying both an iPhone (for personal use) and a Blackberry (for corporate email). At many large companies, users have both a desktop PC and a laptop, with the latter used largely for travel purposes. As it comes time to upgrade those laptops, it would make sense to swap them out for Surface Pros. While the Surface Pro costs as much as a laptop ($899), it would probably make users happier and reduce pressure on corporate IT to fully support employee-owned iPads.

The good news for Microsoft is that these organizations tend to buy devices in large quantities. A hospital looking to provide its nurses and doctors with tablets could buy several thousand. Large corporations could buy even more. And government agencies? The US Department of Defense just inked a $600 million contract for the Windows 8 operating system. Just think how many Surface Pros they could buy if they decide it's the right mobile device for them.   

Personally, I don’t see myself switching. I’m happy with my MacBook Air and my iPad and I've never been much of a supporter (or defender) of Microsoft. But for large companies locked into the Windows platform, the Surface Pro has the potential to be the device of choice for mobile computing.

Image courtesy Paulo Ordoveza Flickr.com/8211313831 

What Are Your Favorite Content Apps?

I'm writing an ebook aimed at helping publishers develop and implement their mobile strategy.

One section of that book will spotlight apps from publishers that get it right. I've got a bunch in mind, but would love to get your suggestions on content apps that are deserving of recognition.

First, to define what I'm looking for, I'm focused on apps from publishers, not on generic readers. So, the NY Times app would be a fit, but Flipboard or Pulse would not.

The focus can be b2b or b2c; I'll include native apps, mobile web apps and hybrid apps in the discussion. Content can be text, images or video. And I'm looking across a wide range of business models - free apps for brand awareness, paid subscriptions, content-enabled mobile commerce, digital-print bundles, sponsored apps and more.

Please respond using this short, one question survey.

If you'd like, you may add comments below. Or, if you prefer, you can email your suggestions to me at barry-at-contentmattersllc-dot-com.

Thanks for your help!

Pinterest and The Verticalization of Social Media

Over the holidays, my wife was discussing Pinterest with a few family members.

I found it interesting that she viewed Pinterest as a “recipe site”. Me, being the social media expert, jumped in -- “no, no, Pinterest is a platform, like Twitter or Facebook” I explained.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and looks like in some ways, my wife was right (as usual). Pinterest this week announced the acquisition of Punchfork, a recipe aggregator.  And I think that approach makes a lot of sense. Twitter still struggles to help new users understand what it is and why it’s valuable. Most users simply read, rather than posting. So, rather than just being a social scrapbook, Pinterest could be well-served by developing a bunch of verticals and acquiring or partnering for content.

Other obvious markets to pursue include fashion, home décor, beauty, autos and travel. Those markets also have potential ecommerce components, making it even more interesting.

What do you see as the next steps for Pinterest? Who might their next acquisition targets be?

PS - here's the recipe for that French Onion Soup Grilled Cheese. Looks like the perfect winter comfort food, doesn't it?

 

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Pinterest acquires Punchfork, the social site for recipes, meals, and gorgeous photos of food

Journalism and Personal Brands

Less than 24 hours after announcing his intent to part ways with the Daily Beast and launch his own paid blog, Andrew Sullivan announced that he'd already received more than $300,000 in paid subscriptions from nearly 12,000 subscribers:

I wish Andrew Sullivan and the Dish team well in their efforts. As publishers find it more and more difficult to generate strong ad revenues from niche sites, we'll need for models like this one to succeed. And Sullivan has been an early adopter of new models since the early days of blogs.

At the same time, this effort is, no doubt, causing stress for many publishers when they look at the strong brands that their writers are creating. 

From all that I've read, The Dish's separation from the Daily Beast is a friendly one. And, let's face it, Andrew Sullivan had built the Dish brand at the New Republic, Time, the Atlantic, and as an independent blogger, long before he was hired by the Daily Beast. So, there's no debate about who owns the brand. 

But many journalists will build a strong brand, leveraging the traffic and position that a major publisher can provide, and publishers will fear them taking that brand elsewhere.

Well, what else is new? Broadcasters have poached their competitors' top talent for years. The same happens in print. The only difference here is that a twitter account or Facebook followers may seem a more tangible asset than the vague concept of viewers and readers.

Publishers will be tempted to turn to their legal department in an effort to retain ownership of those social media accounts. I'd recommend they don't. The best way to keep your audience will be to continually hire great talent and keep them challenged. The audience doesn't want to follow a publisher. They will choose to follow voices they find compelling.

The challenge for Sullivan and the Dish will be to ensure they remain part of the social conversation around topics, even with the metered ('not a paywall") approach. The real value Andrew has always provided is in creating an environment for intelligent debate. Now he must make sure that debate doesn't only happen behind closed doors.

 

 

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