ZDNet Must Read:
HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride... Continued »
Category: Media
October 28th, 2009
Yahoo gains respect, credibility as news outlet; looks to expand offerings
Yahoo, it appears, is discovering what news media companies have known for generations. Producing original quality editorial content, others will notice - whether readers, other news outlets or even advertisers. And by grabbing that sort of attention, the company also gains some credibility.
During a presentation at Yahoo’s Analyst Day, company execs talked about the new respect that Yahoo Sports has received by breaking news, landing exclusive interviews and even creating original, on-the-fly content to accompany video clips or other daily highlights. (Techmeme)
As the company talks about its commitment to being a destination site for relevant information - as opposed to being a search engine like Google - the investment into original content seems to be paying off. Other sources, including ESPN and The Washington Post, are giving credit to the Yahoo for breaking news - and the company is seeing some great traffic on those posts. Likewise, Yahoo is also seeing some traction in original video.
What comes next? A similar strategy around the Entertainment, News and Finance verticals. But that’s not to say that the company is looking to turn publisher partners into competitors. The majority of the content is licensed by third parties and much is it comes in on a revenue-sharing basis or on a “content for traffic” basis where no cash is exchanged but instead drives traffic to the partner site - basically help them build brand awareness and deliver clicks.
For some time, news publishers - mostly the newspapers - have been squawking about aggregators like Yahoo and Google, arguing that they are gaining traffic (and revenue) because of someone else’s reporting work. In some ways, that’s a fair argument. But in other ways, it’s more of the head-buried-in-the-sand mentality.
Newspapers, unlike Yahoo and other Web sites, are still plagued by that yesterday’s-news-on-a-dead-tree model that comes with a lot of financial overhead and isn’t nearly as timely as the Internet. Sure, most newspapers have their own Web sites but with the millions of people who come to Yahoo everyday - whether to check their e-mail or look up a stock quote - doesn’t it make sense for Yahoo to help distribute that news and drive some traffic back to the original source?
Yahoo has its own editorial news staff for Sports and now they’re looking at beefing up the staffs for Entertainment, Finance and News. I know first-hand of way too many professional journalists who have been laid off by struggling newspapers and would probably jump at the chance to help Yahoo build a breaking news, find-it-here-first sort of news operation.
If publishers continue to squawk about keeping their content behind a wall, don’t come crying when a Web company like Yahoo beats you at your own game - with the employees you trained.
September 28th, 2009
WSJ on the Kindle, meet price elasticity
News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch has a bevy of pay-for-content experiments planned, but he should be ready to meet some pushback. One grand experiment, the Wall Street Journal’s price increase on the Kindle, has turned this customer off.
The Wall Street Journal subscription on the Kindle jumped from $9.99 a month to $14.99 in August. I noticed the increase with the September billing cycle (the WSJ slipped one by me).
The Kindle subscription was really an additional $9.99 for the convenience—I already have a WSJ.com subscription. But a 50% jump in the price for no value at all—the Kindle WSJ doesn’t update regularly.
If the Journal via the Kindle were my only subscription perhaps I could justify the increase. However, the price increase for a supplement pushed me over the edge and I unsubscribed. Frankly, you could argue that my WSJ subscription should follow me around to whatever platform I use.
Also see: Rupert Murdoch’s grand subscription plan: Much ado over minimal revenue?
The WSJ is free to charge whatever it wants and I’m free to cancel. And I’m not alone. From Amazon’s reviews:
I didn’t mind paying $9.99 for the WSJ on my Kindle. It was a fair price for the convenience and automatic daily delivery. I could read it in the car during traffic stops etc on the morning commute. But suddenly and unexpectedly the price surged a whopping 50% from $9.99 to $14.99. This is just too much to pay for this subscription and I have since cancelled it. To make it worse, it was really the WSJ “Lite”. There is a great deal of content missing from the daily Kindle version.
And.
At $10/month the Kindle edition was convenient, portable, and pretty readable.
At $15/month - you’ve lost me as a subscriber!
And.
I enjoyed my subscription to the Kindle version of the WSJ when it was $9.99. Having the WSJ auto-downloaded to my Kindle every day was very nice. However, on 8/5/2009 Amazon hiked my rate by 50% to $14.99 without informing me. I canceled on principle. Too bad for me and too bad for Amazon.
Mr. Murdoch, meet price elasticity.
August 31st, 2009
SmartPlanet: Disney buys Marvel for $4 billion; here's why it's a smart business move
Walt Disney Co. said on Monday that it plans to buy Marvel Entertainment, Inc. for $4 billion in a deal that would add characters such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and the X-Men alongside Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.
Under the deal, Disney will acquire more than 5,000 Marvel characters as well as several multi-million-dollar movie franchises. In return, Marvel gets the distribution heft of the world’s No. 2 media company.
Want to know why Wolverine and Hannah Montana make sense together? Read it on SmartPlanet’s Smart Takes blog.
August 6th, 2009
Rupert Murdoch's grand subscription plan: Much ado over minimal revenue?
News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said that the company will begin charging for its news sites. The details were a bit vague, but Murdoch said News Corp.’s big experiment kicks off in 2010. The larger question is whether this move is much ado about little revenue.
We’ll suspend disbelief for a few moments—are you really going to pay anything for the New York Post?—to set the scene. Here’s exactly what Murdoch had to say about charging for all news properties on the company’s earnings conference call:
July 27th, 2009
Startup wants to help newspapers but (get this!) news execs need proof of problem first
There was a piece in the New York Times this morning that, at the heart of the story, was about a start-up called Attributor, which is launching an ad-revenue sharing service for those who create original content (newspapers) and those who copy and re-post it (some blogs and websites).
It’s an interesting idea - but here’s what rubbed me the wrong way about the NYT piece. The headline, first of all, read: “Start-Up Plans to Make Journalism Pirates Pay Up” and then the first paragraph went on to talk about how online piracy isn’t just a problem for music companies but also newspapers and magazines.
Man, talk about feeding a self-serving agenda.
This is not about piracy of newspaper content. Allow me to say it one more time for the newspaper executives who didn’t read/see/hear it right the first time. This is NOT about piracy of newspaper content.
This is about the fact that someone other than an newspaper executive came up with a revenue-sharing model that actually just might work.
Here you have a startup that wants to bring the ad networks into the mix, to allow them to be the revenue distributor that looks not only at the site that offered up the news story but also the news outlet that created the story.
You know why newspapers couldn’t come up with this idea on their own? Because the executives who are calling the shots still have their heads buried in the sand over this. They don’t see the problem and actually - get this - need proof.
Seriously. Proof! Here is the excerpt from the Times story that drives home this point:
For now those companies have committed only to receiving data from Attributor about how widely their content is being used on Web sites that don’t pay for it. Later they will decide whether to proceed with the revenue-sharing plan.
“We’re in ‘prove it’ mode,” said Jim Pitkow, the chief executive of Attributor. “We are going to prove to them piracy is an issue and here is the scale. Then we will take that to the ad networks.”
Here’s some proof for you: Financial statements, circulation figures, shuttered newspaper in Seattle, Denver and other cities. And let’s not forget all of the talented journalists who have been handed pink slips over the past year or so? Is that not proof enough?
The newspaper industry - much like the music industry - for years saw their old, stale business models being challenged by technology and knew only one way to respond: cry foul. They resisted. They threatened. They sued. They tried to hold back the technologies and they tried to dictate the rules.
And they lost. They couldn’t even sue their way out of slowing down the transformation.
Previous coverage: Google can’t save newspapers; smart to dump print-ad project
So, here’s some advice, newspapers. If you’re going to make a company like Attributor prove to you that there’s a problem, make it a quick study. The time is now - in fact, the time was yesterday - to pull your head out and start grasping any and every new way you can find to help keep the revenue pipeline flowing.
And finally. please quit thinking that readers are going to change their habits overnight and suddenly start paying you for your original content. There’s free content all over the Internet and most readers - myself included - won’t want to pay for something we’ll get free of charge elsewhere.
I’m not saying that Attributor is the savior that will bring newspapers back to life. But it’s a smart idea that could be part of the overall transformation, one that deserves a chance by the parties involved.
Finally.
July 17th, 2009
Friday distraction: Let's hear your review of "IT Chicks"
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to preview a new made-for-the-Web show called “IT Chicks,” which is about the adventures of two short-skirt-wearing, cleavage-revealing women who make up the IT staff in an office where employees are helpless, clueless and sexist, all the stuff that would have legal and HR departments involved.
After watching the preview and trailer, I passed on writing about it ahead of time. It seemed to be less entertaining, as much as it was sophomoric, sexist and stereotypical. Admittedly, I can be a fan of sophomoric, sexist and stereotypical on occasion. After all, I’m a fan of shows like South Park, The Office and others.
But there was something about this show - maybe the whole IT angle - that just threw me off. But what do I know? I’m no TV reviewer. I’m just a TV viewer.
Today, the production company released the first full episode, called Backup is a Bee-Yatch. So, if you’re looking for a Friday distraction, invest 7 minutes (or as much as you can stand) and share your review of the pilot episode in the talkbacks.
July 10th, 2009
Sun Valley roundup: Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and more
There’s plenty of high-profile buzz coming from Sun Valley, Idaho, where media executives have gathered for the annual Allen & Co. conference, considered to be an exclusive event for the who’s who in the world of media and technology. Among the big questions capturing some attention:
- Will News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch broker a deal to buy Twitter?
- What does Bill Gates think of Google’s Chrome OS?
- Will Google CEO Eric Schmidt be recusing himself from more discussions on the Apple Board of Directors? And what did he know about Steve Jobs’ liver transplant?
Of course, these are the questions being asked. That doesn’t mean there will be any answers.
The Guardian focused its news story around the Twitter buzz, noting that the Twitter held a board meeting on the eve of the event, creating some speculation that discussions might have been centered around a deal being brokered at Sun Valley - specifically whether Murdoch is interested.
The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, focused its news story around a Google press conference at the event, which brought Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page to the stage together. Chrome - both the browser and the OS that was announced this week - was an idea that Schmidt initially resisted. He had seen the fallout from the last browser war and wasn’t interested - though he admits that the founders wore him down and finally convinced him to make the move. Today, he calls Chrome a “game-changer.”
Schmidt also addressed his role as a member of Apple’s board of directors and whether he’ll have to further recuse himself from discussions about Mac OS X, seeing how Chrome comes into the game as a computer operating system. He has recused himself from discussions about the iPhone in the past because it competes with devices that run Google’s Android mobile OS. There was no mention of a resignation from the board, as was called for in an open letter from CNET’s Tom Krazit this week.
As for what Schmidt knew about Steve Jobs’ medical condition, the Los Angeles Times reports Schmidt as saying that the board was “well informed” about his medical condition but elaborated no further.
The Seattle Times chimed in on a small exchange between Schmidt and Bill Gates:
As he headed out the door to lunch, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates paused to consider a question about Google’s plans to develop a computer operating system that will rival Microsoft’s Windows.
Just as Gates said, “No comment,” Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt grabbed him gently from behind and said, “It would be better if you didn’t make that comment.”
The rivals shook hands as they strolled down the stairs to the sound of loud laughter as photographers captured the best picture of the summit so far.
Finally, there was also the matter of the 800-pound gorilla in the room: the economy.
Schmidt made reference to the “new normal,” a world where credit is not widely available, inventories are run tight and money is kept close to the hip. The mood at the show as it relates to the economy, he said, is “somber.” Reuters wrote:
(Schmidt) said there had been talk during one presentation of a “square root recovery,” meaning the economy could rebound then remain flat, like the shape of the square root sign.
“We’re through the shock, we’re through the collapse. I would argue the worst is behind us, speaking generally, not specifically to Google,” Schmidt said, but added that there were no strong signs of an immediate recovery.
July 2nd, 2009
Judge's idea to outlaw links won't save newspapers
I continue to be blown away by what I read about how newspapers can be saved. The latest comes from U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner who, in a blog post last week, suggested that one way to save newspapers from their demise would be “to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent.”
Are you freakin’ kidding me?
For the record, I did not get the judge’s consent to paraphrase him, quote him or link to his blog post. And because I’m not required by law (yet) to do so, I can still share it with you readers, providing you with information that you otherwise might not have seen. Isn’t that what the news business is all about? Sharing information.
After all, that’s how I stumbled upon the judge’s blog post - through a post on Barron’s Tech Trader Daily that also chimed in on the judge’s post. No, I didn’t obtain the consent of Barron’s or author Eric Savitz to link back to his post - but then again, Eric didn’t obtain permission to link back to the judge’s post either.
The point being: had Eric not linked to it, I might never have seen it. Had I not seen it, I never would have been able to share it with you. If you’re a journalist, what’s more important - sharing your work with the largest audience possible or blocking it from anyone who doesn’t ask for permission or cough up some money?
One other thing about the judge’s post: he writes that “…a newspaper with shrinking revenues can shrink its costs only by reducing the number of reporters, columnists, and editors…”
Hogwash.
June 24th, 2009
Want To See (And Talk About) What Your Friends Are Buying? Zappos Set To Introduce 'Social Shopping'
Zappos, the online retailer of shoes and clothing, is about to become a social networking site, borrowing aspects of Twitter and Facebook and applying them to their customers’ particular passion: buying stuff.
CEO Tony Hsieh Wednesday confirmed to Between The Lines that it is working on an internal project that will “soft launch” in the next two weeks that will enable what he calls “social shopping’’ at Zappos.
Here’s how social networking for a purpose (shopping) will take place:
• Profiles. Akin to Facebook, Zappos’ customers will be encouraged to create personal profiles. On their profiles, customers will describe the types of shoes, clothing, accessories and other products they like and broadly speaking are interested in.
• Followers. Akin to Twitter, other Zappos customers can register to follow any other customer. They won’t have to ask the other customer’s permission.
• Closets. Unlike either Twitter or Facebook, customers will place products they are looking at in personal closets, housed online at Zappos.
• Socializing. Then, akin to both Facebook and Twitter, the customer can ask all friends and followers to comment on the footwear or jewelry or housewares they put in their closets and are thinking about buying. This will allow them to get responses from their “social shopping” network on what’s good or bad about each product or the maker of same, while they are making up their minds.
When customers who take part in the social shopping log on to Zappos they will see a constant feed of what’s been put in the closet of other people they’re following or the comments that have been generated by other customers. This will be similar to Facebook’s update stream, but Hsieh calls it an “activity stream.”
Read the rest of this entry »
June 23rd, 2009
The media is dead. Long live the media
[The opinions expressed here are mine alone, and not those of Google, Inc. my current employer.]
I gave up on the mainstream media in 2002-2003, in the run up to the Iraq war. Every single channel in the USA was selling the prospect of war like a product, a new soap powder. I tried to find coverage of the over one million person protest march in London that I’d heard about via email, and it was barely mentioned. The last straw came when I got so angry I nearly threw a chair through my brand new plasma TV, which would have been an expensive outburst, but that’s what you get for watching Fox News for longer than it takes to flip through the channels on the remote.
Godzilla: I just didn't care
I moved to the Internet to get my news coverage, and I’ve never looked back. Yes, I’m seeing some of the same US-centric reports, but you can easily balance them by looking at the viewpoint on events from world wide media coverage. There are so many alternatives to simple text now too. Video sharing sites provide instant camera-phone access to events that would never have received attention before. You can actually watch an event that previously would only be reported from one point of view and make up your own mind about what happened. New communications media like Twitter have become so important in recent events that the US government requested the company postpone scheduled maintenance in the aftermath of the Iranian election, because so many Iranians were using it to communicate with the outside world.
Mainstream cinema I’d given up much earlier than that. I went to see the movie “Godzilla” when it came out in 1998. I’d seen the previews and was excited about actually seeing a big lizard trample New York underfoot. I wasn’t disappointed. The special effects (an early use of computer-generated imagery) were everything they promised in the trailers. I actually believed a giant lizard was loose in the Big Apple. But during the movie I realized I felt completely detached from the spectacle. It took me a while to realize the problem was I just didn’t care. The story was facile (OK, it was a monster movie) and the characters were one dimensional cardboard cut-outs. I was bored, which is the ultimate sin for a summer blockbuster movie.
Since then I’ve still enjoyed movies, but now I only go watch movies with recommendations from people whose judgment I trust. I use a peer-to-peer filter on my viewing habits these days. As for TV shows I no longer partake. If I hear about anything interesting on the networks I wait until it is available on DvD, then buy the boxed set to enjoy at my leisure. No adverts, you see. Anyone who has ever watched US TV channels will realize how unbearable the adverts make trying to watch a program. Some people use a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) to achieve the same effect, but I just don’t want to encourage the TV networks any more so I don’t subscribe.
Mostly I like to watch things online. Read the rest of this entry »
June 22nd, 2009
Timing fishy on WSJ's Jobs story and Apple's Monday morning news
You’ve got to really hand it to Apple and the Wall Street Journal - they came in out of nowhere and threw Wall Street for a loop that left investors and analysts looking a bit bedazzled, as if they didn’t know what had him them.
Backtrack to late Friday night when the Journal sends out an alert for a news story about Steve Jobs having a liver transplant two months earlier in Tennessee. Had that story come out 24 hours earlier, Wall Street would have likely gone into some sort of tizzy the next morning.
Instead, the story sat there and resonated all weekend, leaving journalists scrambling to become overnight medical experts and build stories around something that neither Apple nor Jobs was confirming. Wall Street, meanwhile, sat and waited out the long 48 hours before the markets would open again.
Also see: Jobs recovering from liver transplant; re-ignites debate over privacy rights
And then, come Monday morning, just an hour before the market is set to open, Apple issues a press release announcing the iPhone 3G S’s opening weekend numbers - 1 million units sold - and, as an added bonus, a quote from CEO Steve Jobs, who apparently has returned to work.
You know that scene in the movies of Wall Street where frantic traders are waving their hands around and yelling “Buy” and “Sell” like crazy. That’s what I envisioned happening on Monday morning when news of that release spread.
Also see: Apple thumbs nose at Palm, reports 1 million iPhone 3G S units sold in 3 days
Here they were, Wall Street traders ready to pounce on Apple after waiting all weekend. And it turns out that analysts were way off on their predictions for new iPhone 3G S sales - by a lot. The expectations had been somewhere in the range of 500,000 to 750,000 but no one expected 1 million, a match to last year’s opening weekend for the iPhone 3G.
Huh? What? Liver transplant? Oh yeah, that… Right. Ummm. But, wait. Did you hear about the news this morning? A million new iPhones over the weekend. And it looks like Steve Jobs is back, too. What do we do now?
OK, maybe that’s my lame attempt at trying to understand Wall Street. And maybe I’m reading too much into the day’s chart of trading. But it drops early and then jumps up and down slightly pretty much the rest of the day. At the end, shares were down 1.5 percent, closing at $137.37.
As for the Wall Street Journal and that liver transplant story, I applaud the journalistic efforts that went into getting the story. But I also would have loved to have read some attribution along the lines of “…, the WSJ learned late Friday.” I only say that because I can’t help but wonder about the timing of that story and how well it played into Apple’s buffering from Wall Street.
Did the Apple source cough up the info late in the day on Friday or did the source insist that the only way he/she would talk was if the story was held until Saturday’s edition? I have respect for the Wall Street Journal but I also believe, as a journalist, in being as forth-coming as possible with readers to avoid any hints that there might be a conflict of interest at-hand. I guess what I really wanted to know was: why Saturday?
Traditionally, Saturday’s newspapers tend to be one of the least read, especially for business stories. (Trust me on this. I spent the better part of this decade writing business stories for newspapers.) Even the tech blogs all slow down their coverage on the weekends. If you’ve got a real scoop, why not save it for Monday, again, especially for a business story?
It just feels a little too convenient and I can’t help feeling that I may have been played a bit. I wonder if Wall Street feels the same way.
June 17th, 2009
'Quality Scores' For Web Content: How Numbers Will Create A 'Beautiful Cycle of Greatness for Us All'
Patrick Keane spent four years at Google, before becoming chief marketing officer at CBS Interactive (which owns CNet and ZDNet).
Now he’s in his third month as chief executive officer at Associated Content, the “people’s media” company.
And the former head of advertising sales strategy at the world’s dominant search service is ready to apply the numeric ranking techniques of Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s digital steamroller to the stuff that has long been regarded as the most intangible of products: quality content.
Writers, authors, video producers and the like may cringe at the idea that every piece of work they do will be graded on a 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 scale, kind of like a taste score by Robert Parker or The Wine Spectator, for a fermented grape beverage.
But it’s coming and Keane wants his outfit to be the one that cracks the code. Literally.
Keane is at work on figuring out what will constitute a Quality Score, for every article, podcast, Webcast or other piece of output generated by an Associated Content contributor. If his 21st Century content production and distribution network can figure out how to put a useful rank on what it puts out on the Web then it can raise it up, notch by notch.
This scoring comes right back to the Page Rank process that is at the heart of Google’s success as a search engine.
“The great thing about Page Rank in Google ‘ s algorithm is … seeing the Web as a big popularity contest,’’ said Keane, in Associated Content’s offices on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan.
The idea, of course, is this: The more sites that link to a particular piece of content, the more votes there are that this piece of content is useful. That is to say, that the content is good. That it has higher quality than other pieces of content of similar sort on the Web.
So the Quality Score that is in the conceptual stage at Associated Content will attempt to provide a similar benchmark that not just the popularity of a piece of content, but its usefulness. In the Associated Content world, usefulness is a key component of quality.
Says Keane:
“The reality of the Web is: Quality needs a redefinition and retooling in my opinion.
Quality is a subjective term. Does quality equal Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman writing for the New York Times with Princeton and Columbia-trained brains and all the journalism chops you could ever have? They create a certain valuable content that a certain user gravitates toward.
But, there could be a guy blogging in his underpants in Chicago about video games, that might not be a professionally trained journalist and may not be the world’s best writer, but if someone is looking for cheat codes, is looking for information and is looking for strategic tools and advice on how to play games and that guy is creating great content, is that quality? Is that useful for the user?
I think quality needs to veer a little more closely to useful as opposed to Pulitzer-Peabody winning kind of professionalism. I think there is a place for both.’’
June 17th, 2009
AP, Meet AC. And, BTW, News is Not Really 'Monetizable,' on the Web.
The Associated Press was created in 1846 as a news cooperative. The idea was to allow member newspapers (and later, radio and TV stations) to combine costs in covering, reporting on and distributing news of import to its members.
Its 21st Century counterpart, Associated Content, goes it one better. It pays anyone to create content. The contributor does not have to be a professional . And the person only gets paid if the content gets read. Oh, and by the way, news is not something that really registers at Associated Content.
You can find lots of Father’s Day articles, from AC. But don’t expect a lot of coverage of the L.A. Lakers’ recent championship in basketball.
“Yeah, you can do a search on Associated Content and find news content,’’ says AC chief executive Patrick Keane, formerly of CBS Interactive (owners of ZDNet, BNET and CNet) and Google. “But we typically don’t pay upfront for that. It’s not something we would encourage over time because news content, while, it generates a lot of traffic and user interest, it is very difficult to monetize.”
How’s that?
“There are not a lot of advertisers that want to associate with swine flu and floods in Iowa, even though there are a lot of people who are talking about it and reading about it and understanding it,’’ Keane (at right) told Between The Lines Wednesday. “It ‘s just hard to sell ads against that stuff.”
What works on the Web is what Wired editor Chris Anderson gave a sexy name to: Long tail content.
Translate to 20th Century English and you’d call it stuff with a long shelf life.
How-to stories. Advice. Narrow, unique articles based on accomplishing tasks. Like making clothes you might wear once a year. But every year you do it.
“The problem with news content is its shelf-life is limited and user interest is sort of ephemeral to whatever that is, for a short period of time,’’ said Keane. “But if someone writes a great piece of content on home-made Halloween costumes, that could be written in 2005 and be as relevant this October as it was the day it was written.”
June 11th, 2009
AOL sees future in local; announces two acquisitions
AOL said today that it will acquire two companies that focus on local: Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. Patch is a news and information platform that’s targets individual towns and communities. Going is also a platform that offers people a place to share and find new information about a town.
AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said that the local continues to be one of “the most disaggregated experiences on the Web” with a lot of information available but no easy or fast way for people to find it. It’s an area that’s prime for innovation, he said.
Going forward, local will be a core area of focus and investment for AOL. The acquisitions of Patch and Going will help us build out our local network further with excellent local services that enable people to stay better informed about what’s going on in their neighborhood.”
Back in my early days of newspapers, I worked with an old-timer Metro editor who believed that “local” was the gold mine of the news media, No one covers the community the way we do, he would say. The people in their community can always find another way to read about what’s happening in Washington or overseas. We can tell the folks right here in our neighborhoods that the city council voted to increase their water rates. There will always be a demand for that.
Consider the stats from the AOL news release:
- More people are getting their news from online sources (40%) than traditional newspapers (35%), according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
- In 2008, local searches grew 58% in 2008 over 2007, while overall searches were up 21%, according to the Yellow Pages Association.
- Borrell Associates puts local advertising - both online and offline - as a $103 billion market, or 39 percent of the total U.S. ad spending.
Financial details of the AOL acquisitions were not released.
June 10th, 2009
Barry Diller: The Internet 'Absolutely' Will Become a 'Paid System'. Time Projection: Within 5 Years
The days of the free Internet will draw to a close over the next five years, according to the chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue.
The only missing link, according to Barry Diller, who cut his teeth building up over-the-air and cable TV networks: a good billing system, akin to Amazon’s “one-click” button or the Apple iPhone’s slick downloading of paid applications.
“I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid,” Diller said in a keynote discussion opening up the Advertising 2.0 conference held at his company’s futuristic glass building alongside the Hudson River in Manhattan. “Not every single thing, but anything of value. “
The fact that content and services on the Internet so far have been largely supplied for no charge is “an accident of historical moment that will be corrected,” he said, in an era of “creative chaos” that will span the next three to five years.
So far, news, content and service suppliers were “afraid of not being dinosaurs and slapped everything up on the Internet for free,’’ he said, in an interchange with BusinessWeek media columnist Jon Fine.
But, that will be change. The New York Times, for instance, likely will have to go beyond the “pay wall” in order to cover the cost of its worldwide reporting corps, even if it means having 1, 2 or 3 million paid subscribers, instead of 20 million unique visitors a month. And people will pay – if it is quality they’re buying.
“People have paid for content,’’ he said. “They always have.”
IAC’s Match.com, a dating service, already charges subscription fees. IAC also operates Ask.com, the search service, UrbanSpoon, one of those iPhone apps, Citysearch, a local information service, and The Daily Beast, a content site headed by former New Yorker editor Tina Brown.
Inevitably, Diller said, the “base model” of the Internet will be paid, at the end of the chaos. The forms will include not just subscriptions and individual one-time purchases, but rapid-fire micropayments and other mechanisms.
Read the rest of this entry »
June 10th, 2009
Tweet This: IAC Might Be Interested in AOL (Says Barry Diller)
Well, maybe the founders of Twitter and the CEO of Yahoo aren’t interested in acquiring AOL.
But IAC chairman Barry Diller might be.
The Time Warner online service, which is openly for sale, still is a “tremendously valuable property,’’ Diller said at the outset of the Advertising 2.0 conference at IAC’s headquarters on 18th Street in Manhattan. “Not the AOL dialup stuff, of course, but it has done a wonderful job on the media side. It has built up a ton of really good growing sites.” Those sites, will have “real good value” going forward.
June 1st, 2009
E3: Microsoft's living room dream coming true through Xbox
One of the coolest things about playing games on the Xbox 360 is trash-talking with players throughout the Internet. I don’t know if it “trash-tweeting” would have the same effect. But that will be for the players to decide later this year.
News out of E3, the big video game show held in Los Angeles every year, is that Microsoft is integrating Twitter, Facebook and music streaming service last.fm into the video game system this fall. (Disclosure: Last.fm is owned by CBS, parent company of ZDNet.)
It’s a big move for Microsoft but not just because of the features - microblogging, photo sharing and so on - that are coming to the gaming console. These sort of advancements - like the addition of Netflix movies last fall - prove that Microsoft’s vision of the digital living room is finally starting to gain some traction.
May 27th, 2009
Sergey Brin: Newspapers can still prosper but need time to "figure it out"
Google co-founder Sergey Brin was cornered with a hot-topic question at the tail end of a press conference at the Google I/O Developer’s Conference. A “mainstream media” reporter from Australia wanted to know his thoughts on the fate of newspapers, especially since many of those outlets are blaming aggregators like Google News for their demise.
Also see: AP cracks down on aggregators. Watch out, Google.
Brin’s comments weren’t so much focused on the relationships between Google and the news outlets but he did take a moment to reflect on Google’s early days of introducing search and tried to relate it to the patience that newspapers will need as they reinvent themselves.
Traditional media, he said, still offers a lot of value but the disruption to the business model means that they’ll have to reinvent themselves by experimenting with new models to showcase, distribute and monetize their content. The important thing to remember is that it won’t happen overnight.
Newspapers, he said, still deliver valuable content to the world. If newspapers take the time during the transition, to figure out what the next model might be, they can have a “strong sustainable form of revenue” for the future.
Previous coverage:
May 19th, 2009
Cat Got Your Tongue: How Gossip Will Become The New Media
If you believe the profile, there is a cat that twitters. And has 512,733 followers, as of mid-afternoon May 18.
Of course, this cat – alternately known as “Sockamillion” or “Sockington” – and his voice really belongs to Jason Scott, who lives in Waltham, Mass.
Nonetheless, the fact that a cat “speaks” in 140-word chunks and has antic commentary inspires a half-million other animals with brains to follow his every utterance is a strangely profound commentary on modern media.
You have nothing to say? But, if you channel a lower species, maybe you do. And command a following that even large for-profit champion marketers would lust for. Zappos (and its CEO. Tony Hsieh) still beat out Sockington, with 621,315 followers. But Starbucks, for instance, has “just” 183,595 followers on Twitter.
Read the rest of this entry »
May 14th, 2009
Adult Attention Disorder: The 'Splittering' of Communications
Used to be – say, two-and-a-half months ago – that I studiously avoided all the new “social” media.
Why did I need MySpace? Why did I need Facebook? Why did I need Twitter?
If you wanted to get ahold of me, if you were important to me and I to you, you had my phone number or my email address.
In fact, this helped me focus. Email, in particular, acted as a singularly powerful organizing tool. Any communication I had with anyone of consequence (or not) could be found in a quick search of years worth of email.
Now, though, I’m checking my Facebook stream regularly – and trying to remember to check that in-box as well. There’s also the LinkedIn inbox. And even though I get alerts about new messages back in my regular mailbox, they still need tending. Meanwhile, I’m trying to think of big or little thoughts to “share” with friends. Got to keep up the socializing or pushing the personal brand or both. As one friend puts it:
“We are being led to believe that unless we participate in these activities we will be left behind and it will impair our social lives and careers.’’
I am more worried about that second part. If I really started Twittering at every turn and keeping up a stream of social status updates and Skyping and IM’g and working three email boxes around the clock, there’d be precious little time to … focus on what matters. The job at hand.
Tom Steinert-Threlkeld is editor-in-chief of Securities Industry News, as well as a long-time media, technology and business journalist. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Between the Lines via Email alerts or RSS.
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
- Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now
- The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now
Essential Topics 
Recent Entries
- DreamHost customers hit with nightmare
- The Big Question podcast: Will News Corp. really pull its content from Google?
- SaaS and cloud computing: A look at the due diligence
- News to know: Thanksgiving tech support; Apple; Silverlight; Facebook; Black Friday
- Microsoft CFO Liddell to leave; Klein named new finance chief
Blogs From Our Sponsors
Most Popular Posts
- Verizon to AT&T: "Our ads are true and the truth hurts"
- My scareware night and how McAfee lost a customer
- Netbooks dead? Not when sales are up 264 percent
- Intel to pay AMD $1.25 billion as companies end litigation war; Is it a new chip era?
- Live from Googleplex: Chrome OS details revealed
- Memo to AT&T: When you're in a hole, stop digging
Top Rated
- Verizon to AT&T: "Our ads are true and the truth hurts"+44 votes
- Yes, Ubuntu can absolutely be the default Windows alternative+42 votes
- L.A. votes to "Go Google"; pressure shifts to Google and the cloud+31 votes
- Intel to pay AMD $1.25 billion as companies end litigation war; Is it a new chip era?+27 votes
- My scareware night and how McAfee lost a customer+25 votes
- New York AG files antitrust charges against Intel; alleges bribery, coercion+24 votes
- Netbooks dead? Not when sales are up 264 percent+21 votes
- AT&T launches Verizon counter-punch ad, keeps digging that hole+14 votes
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- Keep Up With The Latest In Document Management with The DocuMentor.
-
Doc delivers the scoop on today's enterprise content management, printer maintenance, and all other issues related to document management. It's the DocuMentor Blog.
- Learn more >>
- Save time with automated shipping solutions
-
The Business Essentials Guide provides you useful tools and templates to help grow your business and save you time with automated shipping solutions.
- Visit the UPS Business Essentials Guide
- New Online Dashboard for IT Leaders
-
Read about top issues IT decision-makers face every day, plus get cost-effective solutions to real-life IT problems.
- Learn more >>
- The best support in the Linux business
-
If Linux is going to power your mission-critical applications, you'd better have the best support known to business. Novell was rated the top provider of Linux technical support.
- Learn more >>
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - Free Six-Month Trial for Eligible Organizations
-
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides fast online access, simple contact management and better sales performance for a low monthly cost - the best value on the market today.
- Learn more about the free, six-month trial offer>>
Archives
Favorite Links
Favorite Sites
- Ars Technica
- Deal Journal
- Engadget
- Enterprise Irregulars
- GigaOm
- Google Blogoscoped
- Horses for Sources
- Mac Rumors
- Mashable
- Official Google Blog
- Read/WriteWeb
- Scobleizer
- Seeking Alpha
- TechCrunch
- Techdirt
- Techmeme
- The Ponderings of Woodrow
- The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
- Valleywag
- ZDNet: Latest blogs and news
ZDNet Blogs
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- Collaboration 2.0
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras & Camcorders
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Forrester Research
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Home Theater
- iGeneration
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Project Failures
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- Rational Rants
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- Smartphones and Cell Phones
- Social Business
- Social CRM: The Conversation
- Software & Services Safari
- Software as Services
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tech Broiler
- Technology and the Global Supply Chain
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- Virtually Speaking
- The Web Life
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now
- Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
- Email Security and Archiving - Clearer in the Cloud Google The time is NOW for businesses and organizations of all sizes to implement ... Download Now
Meet Doc
-
-
Here to help you with your Document Management Needs
- Check out Doc’s Blog on ZDNet
- Help your company, help the earth I want to share with you the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator, which allows you to gauge your organization's environmental impact.
- Which is Greener: Paper or Digital? The Answer May Surprise You Anything we can do to reduce paper consumption is good. But what about the impact of digital waste?
-
Produced by
ZDNet and -
