Barnhard Blog

I can now say that it was an April first joke of Ochblog
But it is still a great idea that in some form could be a hit.

As some might have noticed weblognieuws.nl has launched. After a few requests, here is some additional information as provided to us by the group…

In a nutshell: digg.com + getting paid if the content of your post is popular enough.

Both ideas are old news in that there are examples of each idea online already. However, the masses of the Dutch blogossphere won’t visit them and miss out. That’s unfortunally and with well known national sites being incorporated in already established online media platforms that moderate rather than letting the community decide their news, we like to see a change. Important to note that not just news but any content can be placed in this “news” context, e.g. stories, reviews etc.

Especially if we look at the current technical opportunities:
- surfers want more interactivity
- more websites use consumer-generated approaches
- micro-payments and their security online are becoming better, e.g. pay-pay launched sms, succession of Ideal, DigiID, TV-sms games etc.
- Money-flows for content from both Advertisers and Main-Stream media online have grown in size.

The web 2.0 real effect comes into action when there is less censorship, payment enforces and encourages postings and though the large numbers truly local news is created. To mention the points:

- Pay the people who generate the consumer generated content better.
With online media, after payment for the bandwidth and construction and moderation hours, first receiver of advertisers’ income should be the people who provide the content and judge it. Right, the members of the community itself. This makes especially more sense since a dutch-digg-like construction doesn’t practice the journalistic rules as much.

- More transparency.
Regardless the reasons, we find that the financial workings of large online media should be more transparent.
Especially if we want to prove that we credit the community rather then the hoster this is vital.

- Micro-Payments are offered too little as a service in European Weblogs-portals.
Micro-payments should become more common-good in weblog-portals. People might not fully understand how to blog, but at least offer them standard the option to be paid in full in what they are worth. Help them proactive.

- Better News-Rankings
News ranking though micro-payments and consumer generated payment should highlight maybe much different news. Not one press office moderator decides what news is worth 20 Euro or more, but the community by 2000 small payments. The local factor is very important here, we think that this segment could really take off.
Volkskrantblog for example does pay for good stories from their blogpaper. However, what’s their entry level? Would they be willing to pay you 0.30 cents? The barriers of entry for news are lowered, another improvement.

Hoping that this gives an idea,

The group of weblognieuws.nl