What's The Irish Times buying rip.ie for ?

See this ?

I just don't get it.

People go on to rip.ie to see death notices, get funeral details, leave a condolence / bouquet and find the link to the livestream obsequies . . .

What extra value would that be to the chaps in d'Olier St. ?

Will they offer a cut-rate IT notice as well as the free rip.ie one ?

Will they study the relations graphs between coldolence writers and the deceased's family and try to exploit this network commercially ?

trajan said:

I just don't get it.

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Money? There are multiple avenues to monetise the services there now that it's established as the defacto source of such information. Do the services advertised on there already pay for listings?

It's free to list someones death so it makes it's services from advertising and other listings. It made a profit of around €270k in 2023

In fairness, it was a clever business idea and has really hit the likes of the Cork Examiner hard and taken a lot of business from them.

Leo said:

Money? There are multiple avenues to monetise the services there now that it's established as the defacto source of such information. Do the services advertised on there already pay for listings?

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I bet they do pay to put in those small and truly modest ads at the foot of the page for memorial cards and suchlike.

And that income must be built in to the sale price for the business. Soo working from the daddyman's figure for last year's profits, we'd have a valuation of around 10 x €270k = €2.7 million.

But that's not so much revenue, is it ? The death notices themselves are free as far as I know. Even if paid, it's hardly likely to cost much.

I think there's something else going on here. Something to do with data about people's relations with each other - and something that some data speculator (you know the type: pants wears out at the backside :mad: rather than the knees) finds interesting. The job of managing this new division of the Irish Times Group is being advertised in papers and online. It definitely suggests advertising ("success of client accounts") is involved. But it also hints at using the rip.ie site to help revenues of other IT Group businesses ("synergies") . . .

I am not so sure that this will not be another digital business mirage by the Irish Times . . . They do seem to have a problem that way

I was surprised there was no charge for publishing, and even more surprised at their accumulated profits based on advertising alone, I never notice too many ads on it. With c30k deaths a year they could take €3m working off €100+vat - not a big additional amount to pay in the overall scale of funeral costs. Or they may charge to post a condolence....

JoeRoberts said:

Or they may charge to post a condolence....

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Boys oh boys, what's this country coming to ?

There's no bar to other people starting up a rival website.

- No charge for a notice
- No ads
- No channelling to charities, flower shops, sympathy card printers, etc
- A small admin charge for notice validation

I'd imagine, in time, the IT will try and "monatise it".

thedaddyman said:

I'd imagine, in time, the IT will try and "monatise it".

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Said he, sipping his afternoon ale . . .
Though the how and why evade him
The end be never so clear !

trajan said:

I think there's something else going on here. Something to do with data about people's relations with each other - and something that some data speculator (you know the type: pants wears out at the backside :mad: rather than the knees) finds interesting.

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I think that's borderline conspiracy theory level there. What value is there in knowing the first names of a deceased's nephews and nieces? You can't tie most of that information to any individual.

The information you speak of is already being published, if that's all they were after why would they buy the business when they can just access it online for free? What information do you think they're gathering that isn't already public record?

Prophetic!