If Publish2 is really going to “Craigslist the AP,” as they announced at TechCrunch Disrupt on the weekend, they’ll need to find a way to convince publishers to actually share their content.
I realize it’s still early days, but my first few spins through Publish2’s online news exchange for publishers revealed a disheartening trend: Few participants are allowing more than two sentences of their content to be used by others.
In Publish2, participants who contribute content get to specify the terms and conditions under which other organizations may use it. The following example is typical of what you’ll find:
Online only: Must link to original story and may include a maximum of 140 characters of original text.
That’s not providing content, that’s looking for free advertising. And it’s not a game-changer if we can basically get the same thing from Twitter.
The Craigslist reference was a nod to websites that have wiped out about 20 per cent of newspaper publishers’ revenues in the past 10 years by giving the public free online classified ads. What is Publish2 going to give news organizations that they don’t already have? Virtually every news website I know already rewrites short excerpts from others’ stories and links back to the original sites. Unless these terms of service change, the Associated Press will always have the edge of making entire stories available.
To be fair, most of the culprits are traditional media outlets (and credit them at least for signing up), so maybe some old thinking was to be expected. At least Mashable gets it and is providing full stories.
I’m not writing Publish2 off yet. I like the idea. Plus, Ryan Sholin is involved. He was telling anyone who would listen back in 2007 how useful Twitter would be for journalists, and I didn’t see it at the time. A year later Capt. Sully landed his plane in the Hudson River and it was game over for the wire as our primary source for breaking news.
But it seems clear that loosening up these terms and conditions is the big hurdle.