Earlier this week subscription-based news aggregator Ongo launched. It’s backed by Gannett, the NY Times and Washington Post and features their content (though not all in the case of the NY Times) and other news from a range of US papers. You can try Ongo for a month for free, after that it costs $6.99 per month. Most content will be included in that price but there will be some instances that users will be asked to pay for individual stories. Forbes explains:
Subscribers who pay that basic fee get access to the top 20 stories in The New York Times and all the content from USA Today and the Washington Post, plus one other paper of their choosing. Those who want still more sources can add them for additional fees. Kazim likens the model to cable TV, where subscribers can opt for a basic package or one with premium channels.
The site is ad-free (one of the selling points) and there are a range of tools to personalize the news. There is also a complicated wanna-be viral marketing effort baked in. Subscribers will earn credits by sharing stories with people who eventually sign up to be subscribers.
I investigated the site and was unimpressed. The content is undifferentiated and available for free otherwise — though the NY Times paywall is coming — and the design is uninspired.
The notion of control and convenience that is at the heart of Ongo’s value proposition is insufficient to lure lots of paying subscribers. There must be much more design flourish here. The experience of reading and using Ongo has to beat everything else out there or it will be shuttered in a year.
The company should start with an iPad app that is beautiful and pleasurable to use. There it has a fighting chance to make money. No one will pay for news content delivered via PC. Yahoo News will trump this experience regardless of the ads. (Ads aren’t always a bad thing for consumers.)
The NY Times, which has a powerhouse brand and unique content, is going to find itself struggling mightily to generate new subscription revenues when its paywall kicks in. Ongo, without a brand and with largely commoditized news content, will quickly find itself against a wall.
There needs to be a much larger product vision here: Ongo needs to do what it’s already doing — though get rid of the additional fees for more content — and what Flipboard is doing. (I have mixed feelings about Flipboard, but that’s another post.)
Ongo right now feels like a product conceived in the early part of the last decade. The idea of providing clutter-free content in a convenient one-stop package is potentially compelling. However the execution so far is thin. Google News, Yahoo News, CNN, USAToday itself, among others, all stand in the way of Ongo’s success.
In order to be viable there must be a bigger product vision (more types and sources of content) and an almost flawless execution combined with a great “aesthetic” experience. Design (UI/UX) can’t be minimized here. There also needs to be a “discovery” element: collaborative filtering, social discovery, Pandora-like channels — whatever.
If it’s going to work, Ongo can’t be subordinated to the brands whose content it features. It must become a brand itself. That’s the only way to rise above the din of commodity news. And to do that successfully Ongo still has a long way to go.
