There’s been a lot of talk lately about the viability (or lack therof) of the business models of companies like Twitter.  But perhaps its time for the traditional media companies to do some evaluation of business models of your more established companies.

For example, put yourself in the shoes of a potential investor, and listen to this elevator pitch.  “Ok, here’s my idea.  You kno whow you can get information and news from the Internet?  What I want to do is take the information that is current as of midnight, then print it on environmentally unsafe paper, use gas guzzling trucks to deliver the printer papers to a few locations, so a bunch of 13 year old kids who get up at 4am will place them on people’s driveways.  And we’re going to charge $.50 per day.”  

Does that sound like something you want to invest in?  How about this?

“Ok, you know how there are these companies in Europe and Asia that make cars?  I want to open some factories here as well.  I’m going to make the same exact product, but I want to pay more for the labor.  I also want to make sure I let the labor unions influence the direction of the company, even though I know that will make it harder to change the direction later.  I’m going to charge $10 – $40k for these products, even though I know Americans are kind of poor right now.  Also, they are goign tot run on oil products, despite the fact that Americans are looking for alternative sources of power.”  Again, sound like a good investment?  Well your tax dollars are funding it now.

So maybe we can cut some slack to these new technology businesses.  Because some of our”traditional” companies don’t really have business models that are relevant anymore either.