The Changing Dynamics Of Disintermediation

Rupert Murdoch views that people under 30 may not be viewing newspaper classifieds at all. "Disintermediation", signifies the notion of leveraging the power of the Internet to eliminate middlemen that added little value and decreased the efficiency of a business. In the context of the classified advertising business of daily newspapers and recent moves by tech giants. The big question: are the dailies being disintermediated in one of their bread-and-butter businesses? Putting aside the well-documented decline in some key aspects of the daily newspaper business - most notably paid circulation - it must be daunting for newspaper execs to consider Microsoft and Google encroaching on their classified ad business. Microsoft is testing an online classifieds service that would let people sell personal items over its instant messaging, social networking or local search services – these may be made on MSN Messenger or to groups within its blogging service. RSS technology may be leveraged by prospective purchasers. Its no brainer to compare and assess the user experience of RSS reader Vs searching classifieds in print. Google could be planning a major initiative that could dent classified ad push.directly. Yahoo, Ebay & focused sites like Craiglist all have their own approach to eat the classified lunch. The future could not be any different given the focus and speed tech majors bring to keep updating/extending offerings as against generally frozen media industry. It is highly doubtful if dailies can adapt quickly enough to stem the migration of classified-advertising dollars to the Web.
Warren Buffet is a longstanding director and shareholder of The Washington Post sees no clear way for papers to stem recent circulation declines or turn Internet operations into highly-profitable enterprises. The future of newspapers is to change from a news organization into a news community. Readers would like to do a lot more with news. They would like to see the different angles of a story. They would like to understand it. They would like to know what it means for them. They would like to know how to deal with the consequences. And they would like to know what others think. In other words, the news is the beginning of a process, it's not the end. While discussing the future of news in the Covergence, RSS And iPod Age & the futue of newspapers, we emphasised the point that the future of newspapers is to change from a news organization into a news community. As we noted here, it is clearly the case that Internet's distinctive role in politics/business has arisen because it can be used in multiple ways. Part deliberative town square, part raucous debating society, part research library, part instant news source, and part comedy club, the Internet connects voters to a wealth of content and commentary about politics/business. After all the new forms of media are part of emerging trends