Making Money on Ebay

The latest to try is Ongo, a two-year-old start-up that will introduce its Web site today, with an iPad app to follow.

Ongo is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and Gannett, which publishes USA Today. Each has invested $4 million.

Ongo is for readers who peruse a variety of publications every day and want to read them all in one place. It shows articles from about 20 publications, and is in talks with dozens more.

The catch: Readers pay $6.99 a month for the service, while most of the Web sites whose articles it shows are free. In exchange, readers see no ads or cluttered pages, and can search for articles, save them and share them with friends — all from one site.

“The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories, said Kevin Skaggs, Ongo’s chief content officer and a former producer for The San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site.

Many publications generally flinch at that idea, because they want readers to visit their sites and see their ads. But in this case, they are sharing their content with Ongo because Ongo will share its revenue with them. And, Ongo said, it may attract new readers when its editors highlight stories that readers may not have otherwise seen.

Other apps, like Pulse and Flipboard, offer mobile news readers for free. And people turn to Web sites like The Huffington Post, Twitter and Facebook to see stories aggregated by editors or acquaintances.

Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices,  and professional editors choose the top stories, said Alex Kazim, Ongo’s founder and chief executive and a former eBay executive.

“I just don’t think my friends are as good as professional editors in finding stories for me to read,” he said.

For $6.99, readers get all articles from The Washington Post and USA Today and some from The New York Times, the Associated Press and The Financial Times, along with stories from one more publication of their choice. Adding other publications costs an additional fee, between 99 cents and $14 a month, which the publisher sets.

According to Ongo’s research, just 12 percent of people read enough publications online each day that they would want a service like Ongo, Mr. Kazim said. But if it is successful, he hopes to include blogs, magazines and video, making it a one-stop shop for the news.

Ongo looks like a newspaper, with headlines that a team of six editors chooses to highlight and sections like sports, business and opinion. Readers can search a topic in the news and see articles from a variety of publications.

Like other sites, Ongo lets people share articles with friends through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. But it also lets people set up groups — family members or colleagues, for instance — for sharing, and facilitates chats about articles. If someone who is not an Ongo member signs up after reading a shared story, the sender gets a free month’s membership.

First-time Ongo users can get a free one-day trial pass, and if they register within a month, the first month is free.

by Max Eddy | 12:54 pm, February 11th, 2011

The President has recently announced a new plan to free up huge chunks of the wireless spectrum, increase the national coverage of 4G networks, and install a wireless public safety network. These are ambitious goals being set by the administration, perhaps the most being the 4G investment which the President has pledged will cover 98% of Americans.

To make this all work, the White House is planning to raise $27 billion in spectrum auctions, and then turning that money around to fund the investment in these areas:

• $5 billion to bring 4G internet connections to rural America


• $3 billion for 4G research and development to coincide with the construction


• $10.7 billion for the wireless public safety network, which was called for years ago by the 9/11 commission


• $9.6 billion for budget deficit reduction

The push behind this investment invites comparison to the past efforts to bring telephone communication and highway travel to all corners of America, and the administration has framed it’s arguments in support of the investment in the same light. From Networkworld:

“America’s businesses are building out 4G networks to much of the nation,” the White House said in a statement. “Nevertheless, absent additional government investment, millions of Americans will not be able to participate in the 4G revolution. This investment will … extend access from the almost 95 percent of Americans who have 3G wireless services today to at least 98 percent of all Americans gaining access to state-of-the-art 4G high-speed wireless services within five years.”

Commentators have noted, however, that the entire plan hinges on the money brought in from auctions. As any eBay patron can tell you, those don’t always work out how you want. But the emphasis on bringing Internet connectivity (and public safety) to the nation as a whole, is a worthy one. Keep in mind, this isn’t so much about 4G as it is bringing the Internet to mostly poor, isolated, outlying communities. Hopefully this initiative, however it really pans out, will give every American a more equal footing in the burgeoning information economy. Perhaps it will be little things like someone making some extra money on Etsy, or bigger things like a farmer finding a better price for his crop.

Either way, it will bring us a step closer to all being united, as as a people, underneath that glorious community that truly identifies this country: Facebook. I mean, uh, the American dream.

(Via Engadget, Networkworld)

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