Techmeme tries out new sponsorship model

By Tom Foremski - September 25, 2006

Gabe Rivera's Techmeme is experimenting with an interesting approach to sponsorship by selling space on its front page to three other companies.

How it works:  A sponsor's blog occupies a permanent place in the "Techmeme Sponsor Post" area of the site for the duration of the sponsorship. The technology is simple: a sponsor's blog feed is polled every few minutes, the latest post of which appears in its assigned slot (first, second, or third) along with a logo image that links to the sponsor's site. See also this post for more on this sponsorship model.

Link to Sponsor Techmeme

I see a few wrinkles in this approach:

-There is no editorial control over what the posts say.

-The sponsors' blogs will be skewed towards the Techmeme audience and thus they will not be representative of their daily output. This could put off regular readers of those blogs.

-Readers of Techmeme come to see what the in-crowd (the select group of blogs that Techmeme polls) is talking about.  They have little interest in single blog posts from sponsors who are talking to their communities.

-The sponsors are trying to sell products and services. Blog posts generally are not selling products and services.

-Blog posts in the "sponsor" area are taken out of their context, and placed on a page that puts them out of context with surrounding content.

I would tweak this model a bit.

I would offer up the three positions as  window onto the Techmeme community and let the sponsors put whatever marketing message they want (with editorial yank control from Techmeme if it should be needed).

Techmeme could poll every few minutes to see if the marketing message has changed at all.



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By Tom Foremski - September 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Media Watch
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Comments (3)

Gabe:

Thanks Tom. I agree that the "whatever marketing message" concept might work well too. And I'd like to make it happen eventually.
But I think what I have now has its own particular advantages.
Regarding the "wrinkles", I mostly disagree. Here's why. All the characteristics you attribute to the sponsored posts also apply to some (not the majority, but some) of the regular posts on Techmeme. And Techmeme seems to be working OK!

Posted: September 25, 2006 9:51 PM

Dennis Howlett:

Tom: My thoughts exactly and already in evidence looking at the posts from Wink (as an example.) Quality control is non-existent which I would have thought devalues the 'message' - whatever that is. Much better to align content to whatever TM is showing.

The other major problem I see is that TM is becoming a scattergun. I don't see for instance where the value is to SocialText. But hey - what do I know?

Overall, this is a very easy model to replicate as it stands - after all it's really paid for RSS isn't it? I certainly don't see it as 'novel.'

Posted: September 26, 2006 3:38 AM

Tom Foremski [TypeKey Profile Page]:

Gabe's approach is certainly novel, and I like to see people trying out novel uses of RSS and non-traditional approaches. The beauty of all this is that if ONE of us figures out a decent business model we ALL benefit because others can follow suit. Gabe has been suporting his venture with his personal savings, I've been doing the same, although I now have a lot more help from my sponsors.
We are all still searching for a viable business model that will support quality online publications. Once we have that, it will result in a robust, healthy, and high quality media industry.

Posted: September 26, 2006 1:33 PM

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