Vivendi starts own Hungarian portal: "Univerzum.hu is Hungarian but there is an English version planned [...] It expects to generate revenue from the portal by offering subscriptions for premium services and from advertising [...] Premium content is to include a wide selection of games and music, web-based e-mail, SMS and fax services."

Here's Yet Another Hopeful Offering of Online Paying Services (Yah...oops!) Premium services are to 2002 what banner ads were to 1996. Everyone's jumping onboard with a supreme confidence they'll be able to easily tap into an infinitely-growing market with the same generic product as everyone else.

I do believe some providers of paying online content and apps will succeed, but it will require better defined services and competitive differentiation than what we usually have witnessed so far. The market for ineffective 468x60 banner ads sold by the terabyte proved to be limited. Demand for $9.95 monthly subscriptions for basic web e-mail (probably spammed with "special offers" by its provider and "partners" as a bonus) will come up to an even smaller pie to share among competitors.

Expect some sites to drop failing subscriptions by this time next year. Meanwhile, we're going to see attempts at restructuring and repositioning. Customer focus, open communication, and clear value propositions from providers will probably make or break fee-based online businesses.