Ben Thompson: evaluation

Transcript context

…And your audience that you are building up before putting the paywall in would still keep getting the same. That's right. My initial model was still Daring Fireball–like, where I figured, oh, I'd have big articles, and then if you subscribe you're going to get a whole feed of them. But the little stuff, my commentary on news articles, I built a new website, again as a not very good web developer. The metric I was paying attention to was people who visited the homepage on days I didn't post, because to me, those were people that were hoping I had written, and they wanted more from me. I figured the classic if I get the XYZ of why. But I thought, if I get 10% to this audience, that'd be something that would be reasonable. That metric was pretty high. I didn't appreciate then just how powerful social media was. Publishers bemoan social media, but those are publishers with old business models. If you have a new business model with a very low cost structure, social media is a godsend because you basically get free marketing. What a lot of people don't understand is, I think a lot of writers give away way too much content on Twitter, and they're out there posting. It's like, why should I read your site when you're just telling me everything you think on Twitter? The reality is the power of social media is that it gives you another platform. I have a platform, it's stratechery.com. What it does do is give all my readers a platform to tell other people, wow, this site is really great. Look how smart I am for having a take on this thing that Ben wrote, which you can read about on his website.…

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