How Murdoch messed up

Leonardo Attuch _247 – It is being commented on in digital media that Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch, the biggest media mogul in the world, is only waiting for the end of the US elections to announce the closure of The Daily (read more). here).

The tendency of the more hasty media analysts would then be to conclude that newspapers, in order to gain influence, must also exist in the physical, printed world. And that the debacle of The Daily, with less than two years of existence and US$10 million in accumulated losses, would be the irrefutable proof of this.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The newspaper's failure is solely the result of Murdoch's business mistakes; he still hasn't grasped the essence of the digital age. It's worth remembering that in 2005, a year before the creation of Facebook, he bought the social network MySpace for US$580 million, but didn't know how to manage it. Six years later, Murdoch confessed on Twitter: "We screwed up MySpace in every way possible."

In the case of The Daily, the errors were also glaring. Here is a short list:

1)  The newspaper doesn't exist on the internet, as we know it – The website thedaily.com is purely institutional and does not publish news. In other words, the newspaper is restricted to the tablet platform, which limits its audience.

2) Murdoch bet on the paid model – Two weeks after its launch, The Daily began charging for its content, even though the internet experience, in the vast majority of cases, is free and without any kind of charge. Despite the barrier of payment, readers began to break through it, reproducing and sharing its content.

3) "The Daily" made a mistake in choosing the name and in the news delivery cycle – As the name itself suggests, "The Daily" refers to the 24/7 cycle of information consumption on the internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Murdoch's product delivers its content at the same time a printed newspaper would arrive at a citizen's home. And it makes very few updates during the day.

In his book "Free – The Future of a Radical Price," author Chris Anderson stated: "Information wants to be free." This is a great truth. In the 21st century, information not only wants to be free, but also clamors to be shared among friends on social media.

Business leaders like Murdoch fail in the digital age because they think with a 20th-century mindset. They live in a time of vertical, top-down relationships with their readers. In today's world, however, this relationship must be horizontal. After all, we live in a flat and increasingly collaborative world.

As the person in charge of Brasil 247, the second newspaper developed for the iPad and other digital platforms in the world, but the first free one, what I have to say is very simple: we have already reached the point of financial equilibrium and we have many years of life ahead of us. And our bet remains: the future, increasingly present, is online and it's free.

PS: The Daily, with its closed culture, has 14 fans on Facebook. 247, with its open and shareable model, already has 36 and will go much further.