So why does he keep writing if getting revenues is getting tough, both for tradional and for new media? “I have a passion for what I am doing”, he answered. I admire people that fight so hard for what they love, but I am starting to get really worried about journalists. It’s always been one of the worst paid professions and it’s getting even worse.

My answer was that I also have a passion for gardening, but that I do not expect that to bring me money. I actually share with him a passion for good journalism, the investigative one. I blog about current events in the Basque Country, the region in which I was born, but don’t expect to make much money out of that. It’s mainly a hobby. And a very rewarding one, in fact, as I get to meet many people I would not get to know otherwise.

The conversation (it was not really a conference) turnt later to the future of the media companies. Nobody is optimistic about them. He did not believe people would pay for news, as The FT’s managing editor expects. “The media is not dead. The business model is dead”, he said. Nevertheless, he was not sure what this new business model is going to look like. It could be about digital goods, he seemed to believe. Maybe it’s about organizing conferences, as TechCrunch is doing.

- Blogging has also become one of the largest fundraisers for the Obama campaign. Citizens can now act by themselves without anybody else’s mediation.

- Big political bloggers don’t speak to the general public but to fan groups. They are mobilizing people. Their job is about building associations and communities. It’s not about the general interest but about pulling people to take action.

- Most information that political bloggers use comes from traditional media. They just give to it a partisan filter.

- Some people are starting to wonder if blogs are really creating more democracy, as only the top bloggers do get real attention. One of them is Matthew Hindman, who in a book titled “The myth of digital democracy”, writes that “the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse but in fact empowers a small set of elites”. In fact, this is like the old media system, in which there were only ten large newspapers. Some people blame it on Google, whose pagerank system favors the biggest sites.

- Besides, in order to get influential, political blogs need to get the attention of professional press and political and social elites. Things have not changed that much.

- Many bloggers were on the payroll of political candidates (see chart from the New York Times), which shows that they are not as independent as initially announced. These same bloggers are also managing fundraising processes in the US.

If you think you can make money out of ads, it is great to give content for free. If you think your business model is about catching people’s attention, then you should definitely not charge them. So these are what I consider the criteria you should take into account when taking a decision on this respect:

1. Getting paid only via ads does only make sense if you are not creating exclusive (= no competitors) content and most of the content is created by (non paid) users or has a low-cost. This is why business newspapers should definitely charge for some of its content (for example, access to archives). In fact, The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has predicted that “almost all” news organisations will be charging for online content within a year. And this is also why many media are going to disappear: because their content is not exclusive but is too expensive as to give it for free. For general news information that is easy to recreate and has a large audience, publishers can’t expect to continue to charge the fees they once did. In the US many people are already looking towards the government or filantropic organizations to pay the bill of this content. “While it is not clear that Journalism is commercially viable, it is clear that Journalism provides an important public good”, explains Brad Rourke.

2. People will pay for some content, so why say not to this source of revenues. This is the case of unique and very exclusive content, specially the one that gives value. Whether or not it makes total sense depends mainly on the number of people who would pay for it. So it’s a question of masses. Having 1,000 users paying 9 euros per year makes no sense from a business point of view, as it is not enough to feed somebody (at least, in Europe). But 20 euros could be enough for a freelancer… So it depends on the value proposition!

3. There are many business models different than advertising. For example, consulting. Most consultants blog for free because this is a way to attract new customers and keep the existant ones. They give away general ideas (some times, what I call Silicon Valley’s bullshit) and sell customized consultancy or books. The problem with these business models is that they are always indirect and hard to see. For example, how many books is Amazon selling because of its editorial efforts? It’s not clear. Be aware of this: it’s more about managing communities than about creating content. User Generated Content is good, because it does not cost money. But don’t think about creating it yourself for ever. That will only work for very few people (the influencers).

4. There is also a business model in ideas. This is what explains open source and many political blogs. The people who code or report for free normally have a different job and just want to change the world. This is perfect. But once again, it’s not a business model, provided you are not doing it to attract people who will buy something else, which takes us to point 3.

It is not only unethical. It’s also ridiculous. For the following reasons, some of them taken from Adam Singer’s great post on paid blogging:

- If Google finds out, it can be a very dangerous game.
- It is making blogs so uncredible and untrustful. In fact, Julio Alonso, owner of Europe’s largest blog chain, does agree with me. Once you make a mistake in this respect, it’s going to last for ever and your blog will always be viewed by the reader as influenced by money.
- Blogging is very much about talking and creating conversations. This type of posts don’t create any conversation and will die by themselves. Blogs that sell posts are actually never going to make it to any relevant.
- For the advertised company it can become a problem of trustfulness if customers find out that its products are not as good as the blogger said.

And no, I don’t think that social media is dead, though some people will kill it if they keep abusing it.

1. The Huffington Post. Number of diggs: 71593
2. Gizmodo, The Gadget Guide. Diggs: 55862
3. Ars Technica. Diggs: 38604
4. Engadget. Diggs: 27088
5. Techcrunch. Diggs: 20728
6. xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Diggs: 19780
7. Daily Kos: State of the Nation. Diggs: 14702
8. Read/WriteWeb. Diggs: 14044
9. Think Progress. Diggs: 13702
10. Mashable. Diggs: 13676

Note: only blogs in our top blogs have been included

The Spanish Digg-like site Menéame is not doing much better, even though Fon’s king Martin Varsavsky bought a stake two years ago. Its traffic rank in Alexa has been dropping since the beginning of the year and a group of users revolted last week after administrators banned some users who were supposedly trying to nail the system.

The big reaction sparked by this case has also a very positive side. Not just because its administrators have learnt a lot from it, but also because it shows how important this site has become in terms of redirecting traffic. Many sites need Menéame to survive. Unfortunately, Menéame has not yet found a way to monetize the traffic it’s sending to third sites. But it should come.

So where should Digg-like sites go in Europe? I always thought they should create social networks together with news sources. In fact, it would be very easy for them to develop social platforms of news junkies which they could later personalize for any news source interested in developing a closer relationship with its readers.

(*) Alianzo is a shareholder of Metroo’s mother-company.

Megavideo is a very interesting case. This site was created in 2007 and its main feature is that they reward video publishers. According to Techcrunch, its main goal is to beat Youtube. Besides, it’s among the top 10 video sites in France, with an impressing increase of 213% during 2008, and third in terms of number of videos, right after Youtube and Dailymotion.