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1.  

   Drudge and Internet Business

   

   Greg Spira, Apr 3rd, 2003 @ 1:23am

   
   

   It's more than that. Corporations simply aren't interested in a business plan that doesn't have huge growth potential. Drudge's profits, I'm sure, are quite satisfactory to him, but major corporations would rather lose a lot of money than spend their energy on efforts like Drudge's. Clearly, plenty of other folks - such as Harry Knowles - have succeeded on the web with similar models. Even today, without the first mover advantages that Drudge and others had, it's still quite possible for very small content operations on the web to succeed. But it's not a model that existing companies can follow.

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2.  

   Parasitic Model

   

   dorpus, Apr 3rd, 2003 @ 2:18am

   
   

   Drudge has depended on the goodwill of other news organizations to provide him their information for free. Drudge has no reporters, produces no news on its own. If other news organizations wanted to, they could demand licensing fees or copyright infringements or whatever else, and Drudge will go the way of Napster.
   
   Drudge is also depending on popup/banner ads for revenue, but as popup/banner blockers become more common, we'll see if his revenue won't also disappear.
   
   

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3.  

   Re: Parasitic Model

   

   Anonymous Coward, Apr 3rd, 2003 @ 10:29am

   
   

   Um, yeah, but why would the news orgs want to stop Drudge from driving huge amounts of traffic to their sites? The article cited the example of the New York Press, which got into a spat with Drudge which led to him removing the link to their page, causing them to lose a lot of traffic.
   
   It really helps to read the article before responding...

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4.  

   Re: Parasitic Model

   

   dorpus, Apr 3rd, 2003 @ 12:45pm

   
   

   Classic case of collusion theory. Yes, if only one or a few news organization take issue with linking, Drudge wins. But if most news organizations decide they want to get rid of the parasites, Drudge loses.
   

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5.  

   Re: Parasitic Model

   

   Anonymous Coward, Apr 3rd, 2003 @ 3:10pm

   
   

   Put the crack pipe down - you have no idea what you're talking about

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6.  

   Re: Parasitic Model

   

   Tom, Apr 5th, 2003 @ 10:53am

   
   

   You gotta be kidding me, all that has happenned is that Drudge is the middleman. News companies create the product, buyers do not want to filter through the immense material that is out there, so they go the Drudge to filter the info. This drives traffic to the sellers, and Drudge takes his cut by selling advertising space on his site. People forget, but he essentially gave away his product for years to build his clientele.
   
   The reality is that there are 100's of more precise competitors to Drudge out there, and they will slowly diminish his franchise.
   
   It is amazing how economic models work, from selling widgets to media on the internet...
   
   Tom

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