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Philosophy
Takeover Tiff Best Thing to Happen to Yahoo
Microsoft made what appeared to be its last bid for Yahoo at $33 per share, and Yahoo wanted $37. Microsoft walked away. What a weird way for this entire drama to end -- if it is indeed over. Most people expect this to be a very bad week for Yahoo on Wall Street, with Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget...
more »AdvertisingShift
Why Paying People by Page Views is Wrong
Recently, Gawker Media, the blog empire run by Nick Denton, made two moves that were curious. One was spinning off three sites that weren't making the cut: Gridskipper (travel), Idolator (music), and Wonkette (politics). The other was slashing the pay-per-page-view rate for Gawker Media writers by 33%. In Denton's go-ahead-and-leak-it email memo, which showed up on Silicon Alley Insider,...
more »Digging Deeper
The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public
Silicon Valley journalist/blogger Tom Foremski had had enough. Two years ago, he wrote a poison pen letter to the PR industry in a blog post titled Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!, in which he exhorted publicists to break down press releases into sections, tag the information and provide links to more sources. "Press releases are nearly useless," he...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Front Porch Forum Makes Friends & Neighbors, But Can It Make Money?
We are a society that lives more and more in our technology-induced bubbles. When we go outside, we wear an iPod; we talk on cell phones while driving. In urban areas, we might never meet our neighbors unless there's a fire or earthquake. But can technology also help bring us together in our physical communities, and help us get...
more »Digging Deeper
BusinessWeek.com Pushes into Aggregation, Video, Participation to Stand Out
Business news is often about numbers. And when you check the audience numbers on the various top financial news sites online, the portals such as Yahoo Finance and MSN Money come out on top, followed by a jumble of online magazines such as Forbes.com, wire services such as Reuters, and online-only pubs like TheStreet.com. As of last August, BusinessWeek.com...
more »Digging Deeper
When Will Google's 'Big Project' YouTube Bring in Profits?
In its brief 22-month history, video-sharing site YouTube has become a cultural phenomenon. The Iraq War has been called the "YouTube War" because of the videos that are regularly uploaded by soldiers and insurgents. The upcoming U.S. presidential race has been called the "YouTube Election" with its own "YouTube Debates" thanks to the questions for candidates uploaded by the...
more »Philosophy
Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups
As a journalist covering a particular business, there is a temptation to believe that we know enough about that business to actually become a full participant in that business. We have been writing about it, we see what works and what fails, so we should know enough to try our hand at it too. But more often than not,...
more »Digging Deeper
MarketWatch Turns 10, But Can It Evolve for Another 10?
As the financial news site MarketWatch celebrates its 10th anniversary next week, the stalwart Web 1.0 company stands on the precipice of change. It has launched a community initiative that lets people comment on stories, rate stories, and compete for points by making market predictions. As part of Dow Jones, MarketWatch will become part of the News Corp. empire...
more »Digging Deeper
Henry Blodget, Silicon Alley Look for Resurgence
When I mentioned the name "Henry Blodget" to a friend from the old dot-com daze, she wrinkled her nose with disgust. "How can anyone trust what he has to say, when he was the one who caused the bubble in the first place!" she said. Blodget was a financial analyst who mightily predicted Amazon's stock would hit $400 --...
more »Digging Deeper
Business 2.0 Closed Due to Corporate Neglect, Ad Woes
When the dot-com boom fizzled, the business magazines that covered that huge story similarly flamed out. The Industry Standard closed, Red Herring went south, and Business 2.0 was on death's door. But in 2001, Time Warner bought Business 2.0 and combined it with its own eCompany Now magazine. Though Business 2.0 finally reached break even after years of struggle...
more »NewspaperShift
The Difficulty of Putting a Number on Journalism Jobs
My story on the shift of journalism jobs from traditional to new media has been causing a stir among media folks, who either see the same shift happening in front of them or think I'm being overly optimistic. Leading the charge against my story was author and blogger Nicholas Carr, who titled his critique, Mark Glaser's dubious silver lining,...
more »Digging Deeper
The Problem with Web Measurement, Part 2
With all the web traffic numbers and metrics floating around -- page views, unique visitors, time spent, sessions -- it's a wonder that anyone can agree to a simple advertising sale on a website. Complicating matters is that the advertising world is used to traditional measurement services such as Nielsen's TV ratings that rely on usage by controlled panels of people. Online, those panel-based services can rarely gauge traffic on sites with less than 500,000 unique visitors per month.
more »Digging Deeper
The Problem with Web Measurement, Part 1
On April 19, 2007, the new CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Randall Rothenberg, sent a scathing open letter to the heads of the major web measurement firms, comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings, complaining that they better get their act together: Imagine my surprise when I came to the IAB and discovered that the main audience measurement companies are still...
more »MarketingShift
Marketers Grapple with Giving Teens More Control Online
SAN FRANCISCO -- A curious thing happened at the Hotel Nikko in downtown San Francisco today during the Ypulse Mashup 2007 conference about those wired teens. Yes, a lot of older folks dressed business-casual tried to look hip and decipher what the kids were doing online in social networks, on mobile phones and in virtual worlds. But on numerous...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Business Crowd Considers Web Users in Third Person
SAN FRANCISCO -- Anyone tired of Web 2.0 topics and discussion, and the current venture-capital-fueled hype, would have been advised to stay far away from the Supernova conference here. The conference site bills it as "the only event that assembles the most compelling people and companies from the converging worlds of computing, telecom, and digital media to put decentralization...
more »Digging Deeper
TechDirt Builds Community of Bloggers to Offer Corporate Analysis
In the world of technology research, firms such as Gartner, Forrester Research and JupiterResearch seem to hold all the cards, knowing markets in-depth and charging firms thousands of dollars for a peek inside. Many small and medium companies, especially startups, are often on the outside looking in, not able to afford the high cost of research firms but still...
more »Satellite Radio
Satellite Radio Wants FCC to Save Them From Themselves
The two giants who provide satellite radio services, XM and Sirius, would like to merge in order to provide greater programming choices to consumers as a single entity, according to XM Chairman Gary Parsons in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal points out that the two money-losing enterprises will have to get by the hurdle of the FCC, which has a specific rule against the satellite radio companies merging. I thought the time was right for satellite radio to see a psychiatrist. The following is a partial transcript of its recent visit.
more »MusicShift
Music Industry Losing Control Over Album Sales
Why is the retail price of a new music CD $15.98? Where does this price come from and how is it set? Is it fair? For a long time, I've wondered about the high price of music, especially when bought in physical form as a compact disc. As longtime music buyers, we have a certain mindset about the CDs...
more »Digging Deeper
Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media
Last year was a watershed for social media, with millions of people creating and sharing their own media on sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr and turning away from traditional one-way media such as TV, radio and newspapers. But for the proprietors of these new media sites, there's one very big problem: How do you make money off that popularity?
more »Your Take
How can online media give a less consumerist view of the holidays?
I rarely cover economic issues, but there's one tiring trend in media that seems unstoppable: The breathless coverage of Black Friday and CyberMonday, the shop-till-you-drop days for Christmas shopping that blanket the business pages and TV news schedules. It is easy for mainstream news sources to err on the side of saturation because these very retailers are the last bastion of solid advertising for the newspaper business. Note this comparison: Google News shows nearly 10,000 stories in a search for Black Friday, while there are only 146 stories covering Buy Nothing Day the anti-consumerist holiday that coincides with Black Friday. So how can online media such as blogs, podcasts and citizen journalists counter the largely corporate coverage of the holiday shopping season? Or should they cover it at all? Share some of your favorite online sources for shopping news -- consumerist or anti-consumerist -- and I'll post the best responses in the next Your Take Roundup.
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