37signals Interviews Newsvine’s Mike Davidson

Inside the news business:

It’s tough to tell what things would be like if we hadn’t sold. It’s really, really hard to make a living in the general online news business without massive scale. Even at 4 or 5 million users, that’s not massive scale. Msnbc.com is highly profitable at 40 or 50 million uniques, but if you cut that in half, they probably wouldn’t be profitable at all. So for a startup in a low margin business, you have to decide eventually whether you want to go it alone or have a partner.

★ Thursday, 12 May 2011