When it comes to intelligence, you get what you pay for. Sure, there always will be people who'll plow through massive amounts of sometimes moot information or random facts, hoping to stumble across what they're looking for. But business professionals must make smart decisions quickly. Wasted time is lost revenue and missed opportunity. Home buyers hire real estate agents to find that perfect home.
Readers buy newspapers and magazines to get better informed.
Fascination with the powerful Web is waning, and expectation of real answers to crucial business questions is growing. Few free sites will have the resources to respond to the increasingly complex information requests of business professionals, and even fewer will find the right business model to guarantee long-term success. For some Web sites, just as with television and radio, advertisers alone will provide the capital muscle needed to offer valuable content. For others, a mixture of advertising and subscriber fees is working. By itself, Web technology carries little marketable value.