Voices en Español

As the global economy continues to take a dive, one question has been nibbling away at my brain. What happens to the World Wide Web as advertising evaporates? The closing of Mobuzz.TV last week provided a vivid reminder of how quickly one’s fortunes can change on the Internet, especially when you’re dependent on ad revenue.  This recession or economic slowdown or however you want to define it, is the first real economic crunch that the Internet has experienced. Yeah, Web 1.0 imploded eight years ago and then there was the crisis of confidence that came about after 9/11. But that was before Web 2.0 came about, before Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and the widespread democratization of the Internet via blogs had become so widely entrenched in the lives of millions of people. And the price tag to read, view, listen, download and interact with all that content? Zero, zip, nada.

The overwhelming majority of us have been conditioned to expect content online for free, no matter the content, no matter the quality. When the Internet was in its infancy, this expectation made perfect sense. Content on the web tended to not look as pretty and polished as stuff published in books, magazines or journals. In some ways it was more static than dead-tree content because webmasters didn’t have the tools or the skills to update their web pages frequently.  Also, there was a fly-by-night vibe on the web in the early days, a kind of “here today, gone tomorrow” feeling that made many folks leery about handing over their credit card info to a faceless and anonymous entity. But as more and more people started to live and conduct their lives online, that fear has dissipated. However, the expectation that stuff is free and should always be free has remained.

Advertising has been the fuel that has kept that engine humming and it has helped to maintain this fiction that everything on the web is free. There is no free ride, ladies and gentleman. It may be free to you but there is always somebody (or something) who is paying something to provide whatever service or content you get for free on the web.

That brings me back to Mobuzz, a Madrid-based company, which unfortunately is the first, high-profile casualty in Spain of this reversal in online fortunes.

Photo via Flickr: “Panhandler” by kmf164

Mobuzz, which started three years ago, was an online video programming pioneer in Europe. At its height it had 18 employees churning out five daily programs in three different languages (Spanish, English and French) that were being viewed an average of six million times a month. There were 50,000 people subscribed to its various feeds and plans were in the works to add programming in German and Mandarin Chinese to the lineup. But at the beginning of this month, Mobuzz announced it had run out of cash and needed at least 120,000 euros to stay afloat for three more months, the time it said it would take to line up new investors and advertisers. The Mobuzz staff made a wide public appeal for donations from its viewers. Although it was able to raise 32,000€, the final tally wasn’t enough. Last week, Anil de Mello, the creator of Mobuzz, announced the site would be closing.

What was so striking to me was the incredibly hostile and negative reaction that Mobuzz got from its viewers. Many people in Spain were incensed and outraged that Mobuzz dared to ask for donations from its web site visitors. The intensity of the reaction, particularly on Spanish-language news media and blogs, personally struck me as odd and totally out of proportion to what was happening. If someone didn’t want to donate, they didn’t have to. So why the intense disgust and anger over an entrepreneur grasping at whatever straws he could grab in an attempt to buy his small business some more time?

I have several theories but one conclusion I’ve arrived at is that some people erroneously believe that ALL content, regardless of its quality, MUST be FREE FOREVER, as though accessing online content is an inalienable human right, akin to having clean drinking water or breathing fresh air. Well, I believe that 2009 is shaping up to be the year that advertising will no longer be the reliable sugar daddy subsidizing the web.

So, where does that leave us? My prediction is that for the big boys (mainstream media sites like CNN, New York Times, Google, and high-traffic blogs like Huffington Post and the Drudge Report) 2009 will be business as usual, at least to the naked eye. But for the legions of smaller blogs and mid-level to low-level traffic web sites, there will be a rise in membership sites or pay-to-play type of arrangements and an increased focus on catering to niches. The narrower the better. This is already happening but I see that accelerating in 2009.

What do you guys think? If you have your own blog, what’s your experience been like from an advertising perspective? If you are a regular blog reader/visitor of blogs, what are your thoughts on there being more digital toll booths popping up online where you have to pay to access content? If you were a Mobuzz fan, did you donate? And if you didn’t, why not? Inquiring minds want to know.