The Yahoo model vs. the Seeking Alpha model

David Jackson, the CEO of the financial news site Seeking Alpha, writes about how its content differs from that on the new Yahoo Finance contributors page.

Jackson writes, “Yahoo needs to demonstrate that it can monetize Tumblr, and that it has a viable new media strategy. Yahoo is widely viewed as a “previous generation” internet company which has been overtaken by Google, Facebook and Twitter.

“This explains why Yahoo hurriedly launched a finance contributor network based on Tumblr’s platform after it missed estimates. Yahoo is trying to leverage Tumblr’s platform and content in areas like finance where ad rates are higher.

“Yahoo is a media company. Yahoo, like many other online media companies, views contributor content as a source of cheap pageviews. In the old model you had to pay journalists; with the new model you get content for free, and you can sell ads against it. That’s the Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter model.

“This is where Seeking Alpha fundamentally diverges from Yahoo. At SA, we don’t view our contributors as a source of cheap page views or a cut-price alternative to full time journalists. We believe in crowdsourcing because it’s better, not cheaper. We believe that crowdsourcing will revolutionize equity research, and that our contributors deserve to be compensated for their insights.”

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