Internet & media, Non-profit & public

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Many online content providers are struggling with their online business model. Nothing new of course. The same goes up for the scientific publishers. In contrast with the news industry where an off-line publication (newspaper) has a rather low price tag, scientific publications are valued at a much higher price. Therefore many of these publications are today locked behind webshops and not accessible to the public. Often the abstract doesn’t give enough information to convince people to buy the full article. DeepDyve tries to offer a solution for that. The scientific search engine now offers the possibility to rent full articles for 24 hours for only $ 0.99. The articles will be accessible online in a not distributable and printable format, at least that is what they are claiming. A part of the revenue will be shared to the scientific publishers.

The business model itself is not that unique. This is again a layered freemium model. Part of the content is accessible for free (abstract/summary) and people can pay to have access to more information. When articles are very long and on top of that complex to read, the 24 hour time frame will probably be not enough for most users. Renting more days or buying the article will often be a better choice. The difference with other micro-payment services is that the small $0.99 teasers are not the only revenue stream for the company. This is only a step-up to convince people to buy full articles. In contrast with news, scientific articles remain valuable over time what makes it more interesting to buy the articles instead of ‘renting’ them.

Entertainment & tourism, Non-profit & public

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Many free business models are based upon advertising while others are based on direct exchange of services. You do something for me and in return I’ll do something for you. Everybody happy! This new approach by Disney combines both methods. In order to get free publicity they are encouraging people to do volunteer work with the Handson Network. When someone gives a few hours of his precious time to such a good cause, Disney will give that volunteer a free visit at on of its theme parks. Visitors of Disney Land or Walt Disney World will admit that this is truly a unique experience. The return Disney receives is off course a better reputation and that without the need to spend big advertising budgets.While more and more charity based business concepts do pop-up, we see that only few of them use it in this fundamental new way. Most of the time a company only promises to donate a part of the profit to charity. By doing this they hope to convince people to buy more goods. All the ‘RED’ products use this method: Charity as a sticker. But in this Disney case there is no direct money involved and that is not a problem at all! Disney is a marketing company, one that sells brand reputation. So anything that can strengthen their reputation will be directly linked to higher profits elsewhere. If you’re a simple product seller you can’t rely directly on such a concept since you don’t have other revenue streams. Maybe in that case a ‘Buy one, give one’-concept will be a more sustainable way of using ‘charity’.

Non-profit & public

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Last week at the Creativity & Innovation PICNIC conference in Amsterdam a new remarkable project was being presented. The artist Christian Nold explained his concept ‘Bijlmer Euro’, a name for an alternative currency used only in a specific district of Amsterdam called Bijlmer. In this region he delivers a service towards the local ethnic community. To celebrate the variety of people he gave them their own currency by sticking RFID tags to normal and therefore legal euro bills. Thereby he’s able to track the social relations between these groups. Local shops that are willing to participate receive a RFID reader to scan these bills. Then when local residents are paying with these bills a shop owner can decide to deliver a community experience towards these clients. Examples of this could be an extra gift, special products or just an extra friendly treatment what could enforce the bonding of this community. Do notice that Christian works on this project for free. The return he receives lies simply in the positive image of the project that will enforce his own reputation as an artist. Alternative currencies are a hot topic these days. Many conference speakers like Nick Bilton, Douglas Rushkoff or Bernard Lietaer are talking about new business systems that use these alternatives. As a society we introduced tangible money due to the simple fact that we couldn’t always exchange services and goods directly in our local community. My local barber was not always pleased with me paying him with my own vegetables. As a result a form of currency came in between and I could pay my barber with a tangible bill that he could be use to buy fruits in another village. But today things have changed. Due to the internet customers can again find other people to exchange services directly. For instance I could get my website made by a German student in exchange for a translation of his homework. And when direct exchange still isn’t possible, many online communities are using other means. Credit systems, karma points and beta-invite’s (Google Wave anyone?) are being used to pay each other. Money will always be there but many new forms, both tangible and intangible will flourish in the coming decades. This real-life Bijlmer Euro is only one of them.