The Bloor Perspective: Paying for web content, skills and future '192' services

One of the main lessons that businesses have had to take on board over the last 12 months is that it is no easier to make money from the internet than in any walk of life. Indeed, in many ways, the web as a revenue stream is one of the most difficult routes to profit yet devised.

With this in mind it is interesting to take a look at the online media industry. These organisations produce content. At the moment the majority of them supply news and features on specific areas of interest to the communities they serve. The majority of the income comes from the placement of advertising on the sites or sponsorship of one form or another. Few companies receive much revenue directly from the readership.

A report by Forrester Research indicates this model may be the only effective way to generate income for the foreseeable future. The report states that if organisations attempt to charge readers directly to access online content, many risk complete reader desertion - most people prefer to move to alternative sources of information that continue to supply free content rather than pay for what they read.

When faced with a choice of paying for a relatively new service such as an online information source, or giving it up, the money stays firmly in the user's pocket. After all, no one likes the idea of paying today for something that was free yesterday.

So online content providers face a difficult battle if they want to move to a pay-for-what-you-read model. The only feasible route is to supply very good quality material of high value that cannot be picked up free that's just one click away. Unless the vast majority of online media companies move together towards this model, it looks like the adverts in the middle of your reading are here to stay.

What skills shortage?

Things are getting really confusing. We are caught up in a rather strange on-off recession where some businesses are doing surprisingly well and others are struggling to make ends meet. At the same time, nobody seems to know how to react to the events of 11 September - some are spending, others are hanging onto the pennies.

Going a step further, the employment market seems to be in a similar state of turmoil. A quick scan around the job adverts in the UK shows the number of vacancies appears to be dropping dramatically by the day - yet we are still being told about a skills shortage in the IT industry.

So which skills, exactly, are we short of? One solutions vendor we spoke to in the last few weeks stated there has never been a better time to go out and look for Java developers.

The problem for IT professionals is that we are brought up from a very early age to believe a career in this business means we have to be able to write programs. So we all go out and learn to use Visual Basic or C/C++ or more latterly Java and we believe the world will be our oyster. During the good times, this is very much the case, but right now, nobody wants us.

The shortage that exists is for specialists. Businesses need people who can deal with real operational problems that exist on a day-to-day basis. They have put new development in the can but they don't have the right people to manage databases, storage, service desks and so on. So here's a thought for all you, programmers swimming aimlessly against a tide of unemployment - go out and get some new experience. Specialise a bit and make your CVs ooze with the skills that are actually in demand.

Telephone directories the next big thing

On 19 September Oftel announced it was going to introduce competition for the provision of directory enquiry services in the UK.

The foundation of this opportunity was laid a while back when the traditional '192' was made a chargeable item. In the meantime, mobile phone companies have been rushing around trying to implement their own directory enquiries services for their own numbers.

Oftel has played an important role here by making it a bad thing if telephone companies don't share their information. This can only be 'a bad thing' because Oftel has a lot in common with other monopoly watchdogs in as much as it can't actually do anything if the telcos refuse to play ball.

Anyway, next year is the deadline for all the telephone companies to make all of their secret customer information available to anybody who can get a licence out of Oftel. The new numbers will begin with 118 and then have two further digits to define the service provider. Oftel is making the move because it thinks European callers get a better deal.

The big trick is not to just stick a nice voice on the end of a premium rate number or to provide a subscription service on the web. It's about who adds the best value. Oftel is expecting special features to evolve - such as connecting the call after the enquiry, categorised numbers for different classes of number (011800-RESTAURANT) and multilingual services. Private software developers will, no doubt, come up with some better value adds.

Businesses looking to take advantage of this opportunity probably don't have very long to start thinking about how they're going to do things. This is because Europe already has a pretty good selection of service providers with product offerings in place. It will be very easy for them to just step into the UK space and take a hold.

The likelihood is that BT and the mobile companies will either develop their own services or license the best one from an OEM - thereby creating another monopoly for Oftel to look after. Whatever happens, somebody will make a lot of money doing this.

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