Delivering your share of the news

The Newshare Concept Explained

By Bill Densmore
Newshare co-Founder
(densmore@newshare.com)
Newshare Corp. was founded with a vision for sharing local news -- worldwide -- in a way that is exciting to view, easy to use and, at your request, free of commercial interference. This page describes that vision. A COMPANION DOCUMENT describes our Clickshare(sm) system for registration, validation, third-party tracking, profiling and transaction processing and is accompanied by an FAQ FILE for prospective publisher users of Clickshare(sm).


The Clickshare(SM) server software

Transaction threshold pennies, not dollars

Imagine returning to a day when making a long-distance telephone call required that you talk to an operator. Or suppose each time you wanted to chat with an aunt in Popperville you had to give credit-card information to three different phone companies handling your call.

Now imagine if you were asked to provide your credit card each time you "linked" to a new resource on the Internet.

Newshare has been formed to avoid such inconvenience. Newshare enables the exchange of news and time-sensitive information for value. It is a system which will allow you to purchase words, pictures and sounds for your personal use from Florida or Finland, Moscow or Manila, as easily as you make a long-distance telephone call.

It links local news users and providers worldwide in a distributed, interactive web of privately owned "newshares". Each with their own voice and ownership, these "newshares" are united by their desire to deliver personalized information to the public quickly, accurately and easily.

. . . Our Newshare(SM) Syndicate is a multimedia broker of on-line local news and other time-sensitive information. We gather the work of content providers like newspapers, broadcasters and independent writers and artists. Then we make it possible for each of these providers to share their content with their own customers, subscribers and users -- all under a single system of validation, tracking and payment.

Our model has two types of content provider, which we call Newshare(SM) Contributing Members (individuals) and Newshare(SM) Publishing Members (organizations). They offer their copyrighted material for sale to all classes of Newshare users. In exchange, they receive negotiated rights to reference and redistribute other Newshare-enabled content to their own users.

Thus, individual Contributing Members are "syndicated" in the traditional sense of the word, but they also are given the right to make personal use of the content of other Newshare Syndicate members. Publishing Members, in addition to syndicating their material, may redistribute Newshare-available content of other syndicate members subject to the payment of per-access royalties.

We are seeking affiliation with a lead group of Publishing Members, who are originators of a body of moderated or edited content, as opposed to a single article or column. Some Publishing Members may choose to provide their content to the public, at no charge, via Newshare Corp.'s central server. Others may use their own server.

The Clickshare(SM) server software

A Contributing Member who only originates content and wishes compensation will be provided with our Clickshare(sm) server software. Clickshare(sm) will provide the backbone through which we are able to provide this compensation. In essense, we will be able to monitor actual use with Clickshare(sm), and compensate by this per-access use.

Publishers are now sought for the beta test of Clickshare(sm)
 The Publishing Member, such as a newspaper, both originates content and edits a "product" created from his own and other syndicated material. The publishing member provides a "value added" service -- organizing news -- for potential readers (which we call User Members) whereas the Syndicate is simply a very large pool of raw content.

These publishing members thus offer (potentially) a much better "customer service", and over the long term we hope that it is these organizations that will become what consumers see as their "Newshare(SM)" provider.

The Publishing Member is likely to start up his own, affiliated, server which will also run our TVS software. Using this software, he is compensated for his material when other Newshare Publishing Members use it, and he is also able to charge User Members an access-oriented fee for using his service.

From an editorial standpoint, our focus is on developing original news content from magazines, BBS operators, local radio stations, TV stations, small and weekly newspapers, new media and individual writers. We will do this by a concentrated marketing effort to acquaint them with Newshare, including the prospect of receiving royalties for online readership through Newshare.

Our value is a model for bringing original content onto the Internet which is not available anywhere else. We can do access-based billing for content on our server and, later -- with the Clickshare(sm) protocol -- also for content on other Newshare(SM) member servers.

For example, if a Publishing Member's subscriber wishes to view Newshare content, the Clickshare(sm) software on both the member and Newshare servers will capture the transaction data for financial reconciliation at least monthly. Each machine will have overlapping records for verification purposes. All that is required of the user is that they have a unique identification known to their Publishing Member's server.

Transaction threshold pennies, not dollars

Unlike "e-cash" proposals, we are able to complete transactions for pennies by "aggregating" many charges to a single, monthly credit-card charge, thus deferring and spreading among many transactions the 25-to-30 cent transaction fee customarily associated with clearing credit-card charges. This means that Clickshare(sm) can economically settle transactions among the various classes of membership involving pennies right on up to many dollars. Many "click fees" for information may be 10 cents or slightly less, with Clickshare(sm) retaining a transaction fee on each click.

Newshare is not focused on editing content, but rather a packager and "broker". Nor is it going to be an "online" service in the sense of having subscribers. Early on, both these functions may be required to some degree. But ultimately we want our Publishing Members to develop the subscriber relationships just as they do now in non-electronic media. We want to end up being the platform upon which time-sensitive information is reliably indexed, provided and paid for.

This document outlines a process for establishing the first "digital syndicate" for editorial content delivered direct-to-users -- on a platform which is scalable to involve the news industry generally in a common method of exchanging value for content. Our editorial focus will be on developing local news and electronic-only content. Our longterm strategy is to broker rights to content which will allow Newshare and its locally affiliates to deliver newspapers digitally to the home as consumer bandwidth becomes a commodity.

For information about how to join the Newshare Syndicate, click now to one of these resources:

To the News . . .
To Home...
To Common...
To Membership...

Newshare WWW site is a service of Newshare Corp.. a Massachusetts-based broker of digital information for newspapers, broadcasters and the public.

If you have comments or suggestions about Newshare Resource Center, please email them to feedback@newshare.com.

The Newshare name is a service mark of Newshare Corp.

Copyright, 1995, Newshare Corp. All rights reserved.


The Corporate Office of Newshare:

The Newshare Resource Center is sponsored in part by: Crocker Communications, a Northampton, Mass.-based supplier of Internet connectivity and telephone-answering services.