The Bangkok Post recently told the management at Thai Visa, a massive Thailand-based expat forum, that Post articles cannot be republished on the forum unless as RSS feeds, or something along those lines.
Barry Main, marketing director of ThaiVisa.com, said, “We have a very different vision than the Bangkok Post about the future of community networking.”
Indeed. Thai Visa is heavily moderated, discussion is often capped and there is a long list of things people cannot talk about, such as anything negative about Thai Visa, its sponsors or the excessive moderation policies.
Perhaps the future of community networking was seen in Thai Visa’s dealing with Phuket Wan. The Phuket Gazette is a sponsor of Thai Visa and, to cut a long story short, Phuket Wan is not allowed to be mentioned or linked to anywhere on Thai Visa.
There are a few reasons for this, most of which I don’t want to get into here, but suffice to say, I think it’s cheap for Thai Visa to take a swipe at the Bangkok Post by saying, “Bangkok Post's web traffic is in sharp decline according to Google Trends.”
Google Trends?
“Our goal is to serve our members with a mixed and balanced news feed.”
Yes, that complies with your sponsors. Will Thai Visa go through its archives and remove all links to the Bangkok Post?
So, is this a wise move by the Bangkok Post?
Think of it this way: Thai Visa makes money from Bangkok Post content — a lot of money. Bangkok Post owns that content. It puts its own funds into creating it. It’s irrelevant if Thai Visa sends traffic to the Post website. That’s not the issue at all.
I’m not saying I agree with Bangkok Post doing this, but I’m saying it’s within their rights. I’m sure a lot of people only read Bangkok Post articles on the Thai Visa website without ever going to the Post’s website or even buying a copy of the newspaper.
The issue is actually unclear. Evidently the Post doesn’t want entire articles being republished, as Phuket Wan didn’t. But what about links? Excepts? What exactly has the Post said? Thai Visa’s statement doesn’t clarify this. It’s more concerned with burying the Bangkok Post. After all, The Nation, the Bangkok Post’s biggest rival, is a sponsor of Thai Visa.
Surely a compromise could have been reached before it got this petty. After all, the “future of community networking” is at stake.
Addendum: There's Thai Visa slating the Bangkok Post for being part of what we now know as the Online News Producers Club, a group of media outlets aiming to protect their online news content, and yet The Nation, one of Thai Visa's primary sponsors, is also a member.
So why did Thai Visa not think to mention The Nation was also part of this group? What a sly, underhanded move by Thai Visa. This comes from The Nation, a sponsor of Thai Visa:
With news groups still struggling to find a workable online business model, the situation has been hampered by the proliferation of pirated content on commercial websites, a big stumbling block to any plan to charge readers for online news.
Clearly this is something Thai Visa doesn't understand, and even if it does, the virtues Barry Main is flaunting are nothing more than empty words. There are sponsors to keep happy. It comes down to money. Bangkok Post loses money by people reproducing its content.
Thai Visa cannot claim to be anything different. It's a business.Thai Visa is simply acting to bash the Bangkok Post. Poor show.