I’ve told you before, Topix is not your friend. They’ve been taking your headlines and links, even your photos, and using them to build a community of people interested in those local topics, your franchise. And all the while, trying to build a local classified network of FREE classifieds.
Now comes word that they’re going after your event listings, your business listings and your movie listings.
So why are you still letting them scrape your headlines and links?
It would be one thing if they were sending you traffic, but they’re not.
Topix wants to own your local information franchise. How much help are you willing to give them?
[…] Owens says Topix is not a friend of newspapers. In his post, Topix getting more aggressive in going after local information franchise, he writes: They’ve been taking your headlines and links, even your photos, and using them to […]
It sounds like they’re trying to build automatic communities. I think it takes more than what they are doing to be successful. Ask Rob Curley.
What are the lessons we learned from Loudon County? Does the Topix model fit into those lessons?
I’m not saying don’t be worried. Papers need to offer what Topix offers as a foundation for their communities. Then they need to build upon that with their people.
[…] But I wouldn’t place bets that GateHouse is gonna take sit back and take it. Look for GateHouse to protect its local information franchise. […]