For several years, OhmyNews has been the P2P news posterchild, everyone’s favorite example of citizen journalism at work. But when BusinessWeek’s Seoul bureau chief Moon Ihlwan looked a little deeper at OhmyNews as a business, he found some cracks in the facade. The company, which had several years of “modest” profits is losing money now as it looks for “a profitable business model.” The 90 full-time employees and 44,000 — give or take a few — contributors produce about 150 articles a day, generating revenues estimated at $6 million or so this year. The bulk — 60 percent — comes from ads; the rest from licensing and other sources. The company raised $11 million from Softbank earlier this year to fund expansion and develop the English language edition (Five editors, 1,500 contributors, 100-plus countries).
CEO Oh Yeon Ho talks about expanding but some observers don’t think it can work outside of Korea or outside of a politically motivated environment. BW mentions cit j efforts that didn’t make it — including Dan Gillmor’s Bayosphere — but I’m not sure he’s aware of the differences between various projects. Oh says he isn’t stressing about the money: “I want OhmyNews to be sustainable, but my ambition is to spread citizen journalism around the world, not to make money.”
But OhmyNews Communications Director Jean Min tells BW a revamped Web 2.0 version is on the way: “In any industry, no business model is sustainable unless you constantly seek innovation to adapt to new changes.”
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post