Ongo, NY Times, AP, News Aggregator, Finally Has Price On Website

Well, for those who question the power of a well-placed blog post, take note. Ongo, the new media aggregator this blogger presented in a post on Thursday, February 10th, actually changed its website design in response to an enormous error first identified in this space.

To recap, it was last reported...

Ongo, with Alex Kazim as its CEO, was started with a $12 million first tranche of funding (not bad) from Gannett Company, The New York Times Company, and The Washington Post Company (not VC firms at all), it combines the following established news print media brands: The Associated Press, The Guardian, Slate, The Boston Globe The Miami Herald, USA TODAY, Financial Times, New York Times Picks, The Washington Post, The Indy Star, The Kansas City Star, The Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, Detroit Free Press, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and other print titles. (not The San Francisco Chronicle as of this writing.)

You have to subscribe to get its information, which is news content from those publications. Ongo is an "inny" or what's called a "closed loop." A system, (1) the existence of which you have to know about as a brand, and then (2) information's sent out to you and (3) only after you pay for it.

As of this writing (in case they fix it), I go to the Ongo website, and right at the top I see three links: "Ongo Is.., How Ongo Works, and in large letters, SUBSCRIBE.

Ok, so I click on SUBSCRIBE expecting to know what the cost to do so is, right? Makes sense. When I click on the link, I'm taken to a page that's just a bunch of simple HTML entry fields, and nothing - not a thing - telling me how much the subscription is, and for how long. According to The Examiner's Romona Paden, it's $6.99 per month, but that must have come from the PR folks, because guess what...it's not listed on the dog-on Ongo website!

Well, since then, Ongo's staff, led by content director Kevin Skaggs, fixed the problem. As of this writing, a visit to the Ongo site reveals a right-side panel that briefly explains what Ongo is about, what it costs to sign up, and an email list subscription field.

That's great.

But since Kevin's obviously in the mode of responding to my observations, here's another: the Ongo site doesn't tease you with content samples right on the front page.  You have to click on "available titles" to see what content is offered.  Even then, the content is not designed such that it contributes to the overall search optimization for the site.  If Ongo represents the "top news sites," it should compete for search placement in the news of the day.

As I've stated, Ongo's major problem is that it's an "inny," which, to reiterate, is what's called a "closed loop." A system, (1) the existence of which you have to know about as a brand, and then (2) information's sent out to you and (3) only after you pay for it.

Ongo's brands aren't strong enough to warrant this approach. Take a page from The Huffington Post: SEO is king.  (And I offered the example of The Huff Post deliberately.  Let's see who takes the bait.)

Stay tuned.