Sunday, March 11, 2012; 4:29:16 PM Eastern
Which Facebook billionaire will buy NYT?
Billions are flowing to founders of tech companies, and the tech companies themselves. The companies will all need exclusive digital content. News stories. The kind of stuff produced by news organizations. Like the NYT.- If Twitter, for example, offered exclusive access to NYT stories, if you had to go to twitter.com to read a NYT story, that would really screw with Facebook and Google. There aren't two NYT's to buy, just one. The first to realize the enormous value of the NYT flow will have a serious leg-up on the others.
- Further, do you think the Times could grow with a few billion cash injected, and a mission to screw profit and grow-grow-grow.
- I predict the existing news orgs will quickly be gobbled up by Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, even Groupon and Zynga, and their founders. They are hugely undervalued.
- Unfortunately for the news orgs, they are unable to grow into this opportunity because ownership and management have no sense of adventure, no excitement for the future of the most exciting craft in the future, news.
- A big transition is about to happen.