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Insider Scoops and Bloggers - possible business model

February 25, 2007 · Posted in Entrepreneurship

So, I was searching through the TechCrunch archives looking for a specific post. While surfing through some of the archives, I noticed that TC has reported several tech scoops and acquisition rumors - some of these actually turned out to be true. That got me thinking - a tech scoop - acquisition rumor is such a win-win situation for any professional blogger. An insider passes on the scoop to the blogger. The blogger reports about the possible scoop. If the rumor turns out to be actually true, the blog gets a huge spike in traffic and most possibly an increased subscription base. And more the traffic on the blog, the pageviews and consequently, the ad rates keep increasing.

So, does the tipster actually stand to gain anything out this tip ? Unless there is any undisclosed compensation involved, I dont see any gains for the tipster. So, why not have a service where insiders / tipsters can actually post their scoops. The identity of the tipster is kept anonymous. Each scoop has its own auction and the interested bloggers compete and bid for the scoop. The winning bid gets exclusive access to the scoop. Revenues from the scoop are split with the tipster.

This idea is not fool-proof though. Some points to ponder about:

1) It would be hard to determine the reliability of the scoop. In the existing form, the professional bloggers get tips from their network of friends - so they know whether the tip is reliable or not. There needs to be some mechanism to determine the credibility of a tipster

2) There needs to be some type of manual intervention - if the insider scoop is that “Yahoo possibly buys MyBlogLog”, you cant let that out for bloggers to bid on. You need to find a means to obfuscate the scoop from giving out inherent details. So, the above scoop would possibly be “Possible acquisition of social network” (ok, so my creative writing skills have failed to keep up with my tech skills)

3) Some means of detracting spammers

4) legal implications if any.

I’d like to hear what you guys have to say about it.

PS: The above post was written in a jiffy. I’ll update this post as new thoughts come to mind and based on any input received from the comments.

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3 Responses to “Insider Scoops and Bloggers - possible business model”

Scott Rafer on February 25th, 2007 9:27 pm

A few ideas by your numbers:
1. The service could hold the payment in escrow for a period of time pre-advertised by the tipster. “I know this tip will be verified in 30 days or by _____ date.” Then credibility doesn’t matter.
2. If the bloggers break the embargo, they lose their access to the system? No reason to exclude mainstream media from bidding.
3. Reputation is important as it grows.
4. The tipsters will have to indemnify the service against the possibility that they are violating an NDA or whatever (which might prevent the service from happening).
pranav on February 25th, 2007 10:04 pm

Whoa !! Still recuperating from the fact that Scott Rafer read and commented on my post

Great input Scott - yes - mainstream media doesnt need to be excluded from this bidding as well..

What such a system would accomplish is that it would level the game a little bit. What happens currently is that the bigger,most powerful bloggers keep attracting all the tipsters and consequently keep getting even more bigger / powerful. And all the tipster gets is an anonymous mention of ‘a reliable source’ in the post..

I guess he/she deserves more than that
Guy Kawasakis new venture: Truemors « Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship on May 3rd, 2007 11:46 pm

[...] Mike reports that Guy Kawasaki’s new venture: Truemors will be a ‘rumor reporting bulletin board’. The idea sounds a lot like what I’d discussed in an older post. [...]