Because there are so many free news streams, I think it would be difficult to monetize a news feed. Is there something unique about your news or information that potentially makes it worth a few cents or GEMS to a user?
(I realize that this might be part of a much bigger conversation about the need to pay reporters and writers for their original work, but I am just trying to get a sense for what your product is.)
@Spartacuss: I'm going to assume you're part of the Gems dev team, and reply accordingly.
I run a small community news website in India. It's the only one in the community, so as a consequence I have a considerably large and dedicated audience/readership for it. However, most of my audience, about three quarters of it, can only access the internet on their phones. And most of them have small data plans with slow internet connections. As a result, most of the mobile users limit their use of the internet to social media, which here essentially means facebook and WhatsApp (twitter is a distant third). This fact about my audience has forced me to practically abandon my website, and turn my site's facebook page into the main site. I mean, there is no point in updating the website if nobody's gonna visit it, right?
[On a side note; most of them also don't have bank accounts, which is one major reason I feel bitcoin has a bright future in India. Once it catches on, it will spread like wildfire, I'm sure of it; presuming the government doesn't make it illegal or something.]
Now, any revenue model you can think of, like advertising or paid-membership, can only be implemented on a website. I am not aware of any model you can implement on a facebook page. I can't advertise on my page, facebook doesn't allow it; nor can I put up a paywall on it. So right now I have no way to make money off my work.
But now imagine, if there were a social networking platform, available on a mobile phone, which lets news providers like myself, or any kind of information provider for that matter, charge subscribers for receiving messages, then this problem of mine will be solved. And I feel Gems could be that social networking platform that I've been waiting for.
By the way, do not think my situation is a special one. I'd like to quote a news article on the subject of internet users in India. According to this article: "70% of internet page views in India originate from mobile devices, while 87% of all Facebook users access the platform through mobile."
Link:
http://www.business2community.com/world-news/india-243-2m-internet-users-106m-active-social-media-users-0934513#SxAzlwGkuU71jgpl.99Here's an infographic from the article to illustrate my point: