Clickshare -- a system that provides content and payments

Not everyone likes oysters. But everyone has to eat.

And though I like oysters, I don't especially want to dig them up first. I don't even want to shuck them. There are people in the middle who are willing to do that for me.

So goes capitalism.

Not everyone wants to be a "content provider" (the definition of which sounds suspiciously like what newspapers, magazines and newsletters do), but since everybody has to eat, developing a methodology to extend the life of -- and ancillary income from -- your content may be something you want to do, no matter how distasteful you might find capitalism.

In business, the person in the middle is the one who has found out how to make a buck or two by organizing the territory, virtual or otherwise, between those who want something and those who have something to sell. Welcome to the Wonderful World of the Content Provider.

Newspapers, of course, have been buying content through syndicates and wire services for years. But web technology, coupled with imaginative and innovative iterations of age-old practices has created a demand for content that has probably grown more rapidly in the last five years than it had in the last 500.

Initially content was simply shoveled from print to the Web or vice versa. But as computer and Internet technology has begun to approach ubiquity, there has been the simultaneous rise of a new form of media. New media, new practices, new forms of content, new ways to sell it, find it, buy it.

Enter Clickshare, Contentville, iCopyright, iSyndicate. In fact, rather than reading through a long list of proper nouns here in print, just go to your web browser's search function, put a couple of quotation marks around either end of the phrase "content provider" and no matter how many industry publications you read, how much junk e-mail you receive, you'll likely be surprised at the number of locations ready to supply your web site with content written by someone else.

But take heed: There's more to providing content than providing content. For example, the Massachusetts-based Clickshare provides not only content, but the full-service approach of an oyster monger: transaction software designed to allow content publishers to sell digital content -- whether it's music, text or graphics -- in small units, and to facilitate the relationship between content wholesalers (content providers) and content retailers (or publishers). Clickshare is a business-to-business exchange service that offers consumers an account at one web site, with one-bill, one-ID, one-click purchasing, privacy and personalization at thousands of other web sites.

"Our customer relationship exchange platform provides the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for private-protected demographic sharing and personalization as an integral part of digital content sales," said Nell Fields, Clickshare's president. "There are alternative payment schemes, authentication, digital wallets, privacy protecting," she said, "but nothing created from the ground up to support in one platform all of these requirements."

Narrow niche
Iowa's Sioux City Journal (circulation 48,000), part of Hagaddon Newspapers, is among Clickshare's first customers, and will use it initially to enable a planned "Gateway Computer Resource Center," said the Journal's, Bernard Re Jr., the paper's new-media manager.

This resource center -- focusing on the proudly rural computer maker and retailer -- will contain all of the Journal's on-line stories about the local company and its founding family, the Waitts. The database, dating back to 1996, is likely to be of interest to the large Gateway workforce located in Sioux City as well as around the world, not to mention industry analysts. The first phase of implementation allows free access for existing print subscribers and pay-for-view access to other registered Clickshare members.

Eventually, Re expects the Journal to expand content for other "super-local" topics, including other local businesses that also have potential value as national and international research sites. "Clickshare will allow us to bring deeper local content on-line that is driven by a marketing perspective that adds value for retaining existing print subscribers and/or signing up on-line subscribers," he said.

Re cites the flexibility to control access to individual items as a key in the Journal's decision to sign on with Clickshare, since it allows the paper to provide either free access or Clickshare-enabled access. "As the Clickshare-enabled network of registered users grows, this will expand our potential for revenue as well," he said. "The Clickshare access and revenue model expands the copyright of the valuable content assets that this newspaper produces, but until now could only be distributed free. Clickshare works to unlock these digital assets for the benefit of readers and begins to transition a part of the news business revenue stream from a paid print subscription base to a pay-per-view on-line registered user base model."

So far, according to Re, the beta testing at the Journal is "going great!" Although the paper won't be able to evaluate the impact of the Clickshare implementation on circulation until further into the process, at a time when debates about the future shape of the news business are fiery, the Clickshare model has already shown the circulation department that the Journal's new media department can come up with solutions that add value to the print subscription and help retain print subscribers.

Transition to on-line
While Clickshare-derived content will be initially available as a freebie to the Journal's print subscribers, the Journal plans to eventually develop an on-line-only subscription model. "By adding on-line content value [we] retain the existing print subscription revenue for as long as possible while we transition to an on-line registered-user base -- bringing as many existing print subscribers along as possible -- free access and pay-per-view model," said Re.

Such a model may become increasingly important, if Clickshare projections prove true. Clickshare President Fields anticipates that mass-market advertising is unlikely to play as significant a role in supporting digital content delivery as it has in the physical delivery environment. Instead, she believes that other forms of sponsorship, from affinity-group marketing to premiums and points to paying folks to view commercial messages, will become increasingly important. Not coincidentally, these are all facilities that the Clickshare platform supports.

But why, when I can buy a daily newspaper out of the rack for about a quarter, have it delivered to my home for less, and not have the expense or hassle of printing out my own reading material, would I want to pay a per-item price for web content? Fields said that Clickshare research has shown that "people will pay a surprising amount for the convenience of receiving exactly the information they need, exactly when and where they need it," something not possible with fixed media such as newspapers, books or magazines.

Re considers Clickshare's services to be unique because it offers a "vast, open-ended, distributed ... registered-user base." He expects that the open-ended feature will provide the Journal with an advantage over one-site, closed-ended registration solutions. "The fact that Clickshare will enable registered users across multiple sites and then track access and distribute revenue is a 'distributed model' that builds on the strength of the Internet model itself -- of shared access and building relationships. That it is also a revenue model is the 'killer' part of the application."

Fields adds that the Clickshare network creates an incentive for all parties to co-market among each other's customers, and also allows for dynamic pricing. Clickshare has developed an alliance with Advanced Publishing Technologies Inc. of Burbank, Calif., which has an installed base of more than 150 U.S. dailies for its pre-press and accounting software. An enhanced version of the APT product is in roll out, and will allow client newspapers to publish advertising and content direct-to-web, with billing and pre-press synchronized.

Making it easy for consumers
And while content providers won't shuck your oysters for you, they may very well handle copyright, licensing and royalty issues for you. They'll provide you with the equivalent of a contingent creative work force, people willing to write on spec and wait for someone to buy what they've got to sell.

"The challenge we set for ourselves in designing Clickshare was to make it trivially easy for consumers to do the right thing -- buy content with one click from anywhere -- rather than hard to do the wrong thing -- commit piracy," said Fields. "From the start, we designed Clickshare to allow publishers to choose any level of copyright-protection they require."

Clickshare requires no special end-user software, but still allows publishers to encapsulate content in a digital container. "Many knowledgeable technologists claim that encrypting music and other content will ultimately fail because hackers will find a way around it," said Fields. "The cell-phone industry would not exist today if the early carriers had waited to design a perfect solution for cloning. Instead, they set their rates at a level at which they could afford to write off some cloning and still have a terrific business. We believe that content providers ... should adopt the same approach."

Clickshare does not require end-user software and consumers are not required to pre-fund an account, qualities that may prove to be drawbacks to other models for content provision. It also does not require "cookies" -- little bits of code written to a user's hard disk that some users perceive as an invasion of privacy. It can nonetheless aggregate transactions as small as five cents.

While newspapers are an important part of Clickshare's market strategy, the company allows consumers to choose their own "trusted agent" -- whether a portal, bank, ISP, telephone company, affinity group or retailer -- and, depending on the agent they choose to handle their billing, have each single-click purchase charged to a digital wallet or custom account setup by the agent.

In its early phases, Clickshare will address three Internet needs: sales of premium content to vertical market niches; revenue sharing among sites, including providing royalties for data and commissions for third party sales, and the transfer of privacy-protected demographics among users and web sites.

In April, Clickshare acquired $500,000 of private funding and has used that financing to add staff and to re-engineer the technology for flexibility and scalability, as well as to incorporate new Java and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) technologies. "More important," said Fields, "we are now able to project a 'can-do' attitude, image -- and reality -- because our financing is coming from people such as the founder of PeopleSoft."

In addition to Fields, Clickshare's management team is drawn from the ranks of well-known publishers, including James Shaffer, formerly chief executive of Guy Gannett Communications Inc. of Portland, Maine, whose resume includes titles such as as chief financial officer at the Los Angeles Times and vice president of Chicago's Sun-Times Co. Founder Bill Densmore is a career journalist, technology writer and analyst.

Meanwhile, Clickshare executives are discussing the future with other potential and "significant" partners. "Clickshare makes the most sense when there is a critical mass of content providers and service providers involved simultaneously," said Fields, who anticipates that event will occur sometime next year. "The discussions are going very well, and new partners sign up almost daily. But we aren't going to 'launch' until we feel comfortable that when we pull the rip cord, there is no going back."

Clickshare has completed its second technology-development cycle. Its development platform is Red Hat Linux and it is a Red Hat Inc. software partner. In addition to APT, KOZ.com and Enfish Technologies have signed on as Clickshare launch partners. Beta partners have included the Comtex News Network Inc., an aggregator and reseller of real-time publishing content, and Tristar Technologies Ltd. of South Africa, an Internet commerce service provider, as well as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst bookstore.

And whether or not you like oysters, you've got to admire the oyster-monger.

-- L. Carol Christopher, lcc@colepapers.net

"One bill, one account -- content purchase made easy, personal ... and private.
"With Clickshare, you can purchase information, music, video, software and other digital objects simply across the Internet. You can have an account at one web site, and make single-click purchases throughout the web without having to use a credit card or pass around personal information. And you get one bill from a Clickshare Service Provider that you choose."
-- From the Clickshare web site (http://www.clickshare.com).

Clickshare Service Corp.,
(413) 458-8001,
e-mail: corp@clickshare.com.

Also see Digital content service providers

From THE COLE PAPERS, September 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.