So your revenue is half a million and you’re not profitable yet?
No, so that’s sort of where we’re moving to.
So what will you be selling?
We license our technology. Wotnews.com.au is essentially an example of what can be done with news content albeit headlines and snippets in our case using our technology.
So for example, we’ve licensed the technology to a large investment bank here in Australia – Macquarie EDGE – who are on the brink of launching a large customer facing website.
They have always believed that the news is a really important tool that people will use to make decisions about what they do.
So they wanted to do something different than just consume a commercial news feed like Lexis Nexis or Dow Jones or whatever it is and just present in chronological ordered news pieces. They wanted to do more than that. They wanted to allow people to be a part of this environment and explore the news laterally, to see the relationships between companies and people in the news and to really use the news the way that news can be used on Wotnews. So we’ve sold the tech license to them and it’s a three year software licensing deal. So that they can do that.
So I assume on their site they will run news that would appeal to their customers.
Yes that’s right.
Then again aren’t you getting into that legal issue that the site – the investment banks – hasn’t created that news?
They actually purchase a number of commercial news feeds so they are licensed to display Dow Jones, Lexis Nexis and a couple of others.
So then they just use technology to filter it out so it’s relevant.
Yes, that’s right – to filter, organise, to show the relationships, all those sorts of things. So they use our technology across those commercial news feeds as well as the ASX announcement stream that is also a type of news that they pull into the environment. And over time they will develop relationships with other news sources that are maybe more flexible in their commercial approach.
So news publishers in the blogosphere for example, and blend that type of news with Dow Jones news, Ynews and ASX announcements and provide a similar experience to what we do on Wotnews.
And we can easily provide that capability to the News digital network or Fairfax for example or anyone in the states or anywhere else. That is a type of revenue for us that we’re chasing.
And is that a global business for you?
Yes absolutely. About six to eight months ago we launched a UK and a US equivalent of the Australian site. So the Australian site sort of focuses on primarily Australian business news and that means primarily business news about Australian companies.
So they’re reported on most in Australia but they’re also reported on by some world sources as well. Rio or BHP obviously have operations in Brazil and etc, so we do have a world section that captures news about those companies, Australian companies overseas as well.
And the same logic is then applied to Wotnews.co.uk – business news about British companies and Wotnews.com in the US space. And the idea there is if we get our service and our offering and our case study out into those markets, why couldn’t we sell or partner up with other businesses, publishers or banks or financial services, type style businesses in the states, the UK as well as Australia? Why limit ourselves just to this market? As wonderful as it is, we all know that it’s a bit smaller than some of the other larger markets.
There’s this very big debate going on about that which has hit music publishing and is now hitting news publishing – about the moral rights and content creation. Fairfax already limits how much of its content goes on news services. What are the risks to your business if these major publishers say ‘sorry we’re going to charge for online and we’re not going to make those services available for things you’re doing’?
I don’t have the answers to any of this. I don’t think anyone does. I have some thoughts. To me it sounds like there are two bits at play. One there’s the issue of whether to charge for content or not, that’s the first bit. And the second bit is then to opt out of search indexes or not. And to me they actually feel like two different things.
I don’t see why a news organisation wouldn’t charge for content that really is unique, exclusive, you can’t get it anywhere else and it has value. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t at least try charging for that type of content. I think there are examples out there where publishers are charging and everybody’s seen the kind of spreadsheets floating around the web where organisations have done modelling on ‘if we charge a membership rather than advertising well maybe we’ll get less views but do the modelling and see where the numbers fall’. It seems to me that’s certainly something worth trying. I would be doing that.
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