Engineering driven companies just don't get content. At Gizmodo.com, this week's Feature Creep: 500 Books in Your Gadget Bag provides an excellent insight into the disconnect between hardware designers, content publishers and readers (the all important buyers!) that has plagued the ebook industry. Sharp is showing a prototype color eBook reader, which looks really cool, along the line of Apple products. Earlier this year, the Sony Librie reader was introduced. Technically, both look attractive with better screen resolution and battery life than the SoftBook / RocketBook readers that I worked with several years ago.

But here is the kicker. The publishing industry produces over 60,000 new titles per year, with well over a million titles in print. But for eBooks, Sharp is touting the availability of only 7,000 titles for their new devices available in 2007, which presumably use the same format as their handheld Zaurus. Even worse, Sony had only a skimpy 400 titles available at launch.

Now this might be quasi-attractive if I could put self-published ebooks, purchases from online eBook stores, and my mountain of Adobe PDF reports on the device...but alas, only proprietary DRM protected commercial books are allowed! To make matters worse, the books expire at the end of 60 days on the Sony DRM model, presumably after having paid full retail price. Presumably, if the content included periodicals, the 60 day period might make some sense, but this approach for books doesn't allow me to pile up interesting reading material to be browsed sometime in the next year. This approach really doesn't work for libraries, who have been early adopters of ebooks.

Maybe someday designing engineers will also be readers, and a good device with a good business model will emerge, but for now the PDA and PC remain the reader devices of choice....functional, if not cool.

Blogsploitation: Big Media Try to Steal Bloggers' Thunder at DNC
Real fires back at Apple in DRM dogfight
BBC tunes in to a digital future
MIT/Cornell Summarizer Gets the Idea
Finding the Invisible Web
Getting More from Your Content Management System
Google Thyself - How Search Engines are Impacting Reputation Management
AuthentiDate and Canada Post Partner to Create Universal Electronic Postmark for Content Authenticity
Westlaw Wins Law Office Computing Readers' Choice Awards for Eighth Consecutive Year
Imaging Services Corporation adds HexaLock CD-ROM and CD-RX Copy Protection Solutions

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A fascinating new report from Nielsen/NetRatings is claiming the unthinkable: that the major search engines are running out of affordable ad inventory, with demand far outstripping supply. Whoda thunk we could have reached that point so quickly?

The core issue is this: the search engine model is to bid on keywords, and though Google is proliferating through to thousands of other Web sites via its AdWords program, an advertiser who buys a single keyword will appear on all relevant Web sites. There's no further selection or targeting capability, and that limits supply. There may be an infinite number of words, but there are apparently a very finite number of words people are willing to pay to be associated with, and a limit to how much they are willing to pay to be associated with them.

Since these keyword programs are priced using an auction model, with the search engine making its money based on the number of click-throughs, it could be that the big search engines have painted themselves into a corner, albeit a profitable one. That's because the current scenario will mean advertisers will have to pay increasing amounts to maintain the same level of visibility. At the same time, however, it doesn't appear to be in the interest of the search engines to create more targeting options for advertisers, since they make more money for a lot less work in the current model. Indeed, prices could potentially drop if the search engines created more targeting options, since that would effectively create more inventory.

The other fascinating trend is the rapid growth of software products and service firms dedicated to managing paid search programs, and they all seem to be flourishing, given the inherent complexity of the auction process, and the real need to constantly tweak both keywords and bids to achieve maximum results without paying too much. There really is no precedent for such a high level of involvement by advertisers in overseeing their own advertising programs. As one example, Overture has just released an application called Search Optimizer that sits on top of its existing Marketing Console application, and is designed to ease management of large numbers of keywords. Rather than offering the product free to big customers to mitigate the complexity of its own system, Overture is reportedly charging an average of $500 per month for this service. Ouch.

Put together these two things: increased costs and increased complexity, and what do you get? Advertiser backlash. No, we don't think paid search is going to collapse. Indeed, the Nielsen/NetRating reports suggests to advertisers that for now the results are still worth the cost and the hassle. But with affordable keyword inventory drying up, some advertisers may be forced out of the paid search market.

What's it all mean? We think the stage is being set for a prediction we first made a year ago: a two-tier search market, with B2B buying guides purchasing keywords to drive traffic to their sites, and then selling space on their sites to advertisers, effectively reselling the keywords.

Why will this happen? As popular keywords become increasingly expensive, among the few who can afford the cost will be those who directly or indirectly are reselling them. Further, in this two-tier arrangement, advertisers get the benefits of keyword marketing without the oversight hassles, and effectively share the cost. The publisher then assumes the role of buying the proper keywords, managing the program and paying for it, while the advertiser goes back to the traditional and far easier role of simply writing a check.

Another great benefit to this approach, one that publishers and advertisers are just beginning to recognize, is that visitors that come to them this way are in effect "triple filtered." It's highly unlikely that someone who clicks on a keyword driven contextual ad, then visits a vertical B2B site, then clicks on an individual advertiser link is doing so accidentally. That means better quality clicks, and more value to the advertiser.

We've long maintained that the big search engines couldn't succeed by trying to be all things to all people, but we admit we never anticipated that they would become victims of their own success.

Bloggers: The new media or a fad?
Apple to play fair with FairPlay?
To Fix or Not to Fix: Online Corrections Policies Vary Widely
ERP and Content Management: Harmonic Convergence?
Terra Lycos finds buyer for US unit
Prince slams record labels
Dow Jones & Company and Meximerica's Rumbo to Publish Wall Street Journal Section
Digimarc Licenses Patents to Verimatrix for Forensic Tracking, Copy Protection Applications
Deep Web Technologies Recipient of Phase II SBIR Grant Award from the U.S. Department of Energy
LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's Lawyers.com Web Site Wins 2004 Model of Excellence Award

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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer covers along with most of the media outlets the arrival of press-credentialed webloggers at this week's Democratic National Convention. The P-I along with others compare this to the advent of other media into the mainstream of news, but it seems to be a weak comparison at best. "Official" bloggers are very low on the reporting totem pole at this television-tailored non-event designed not for niche audiences but for the masses that tune in to hear what amounts to a video weblog from the speakers at the podium. To that end many webloggers are watching on television and the Web from home and commenting or compiling media coverage from there (great example at Wonkette), which for all of the non-drama that the convention offers is probably just as valid a form of coverage for this kind of event as trolling through second-tier buffets away from the rainmakers at the convention itself. Probably more significant is the P-I's noting that many delegates on the floor of the convention itself are offering their insights in weblogs - the kind of participant journalism that seems to be well-suited for webloggers covering events. Weblogging's power is not as much in displacing traditional journalism as it is in provding a story told plainly from the front lines of events by people who have real-life credentials that traditional journalists cannot replicate.

30 July Update: Do check out USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review's excellent summary of weblog coverage of the Democratic National Convention, including the efforts of mainstream media outlets to have their own "star" journalists and co-opted webloggers add depth to the affairs. To some degree I think that it underlines my original point, but it also adds in what mainstream journalists COULD be doing if they so chose in addition to traditional pieces - when they're not trying to be tragically hip...

WSJ Online Offers RSS Feeds to Readers
Microsoft gives MSN TV Web Access a Savvy Face-lift
Time Warner Raises Outlook After Strong Revenue Gains
Some Online Music Providers Allow Sharing
Overture tool broadens ad analysis
HP Use OneSource Business Information Solution To Improve Productivity
U.S. Venture Capital Activity Climbs in Second Quarter
Kasenna(R) Enables Secure Broadband On-Deman Delivery of First-Run Digital Movie Content
Client Dynamics-Powered 'Dow Jones Wealth Manager' Earns Industry Accolades
SLA Establishes Australia and New Zealand Chapter

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Dow Jones News reports along with others on the rosy earnings report from Time Warner, which reported strong revenue growth in entertainment and cable operations. Cable growth was largely based on Internet access, though, while subscribers continue to drop off of AOL and reduce subscription incomes; ad revenues allowed AOL to post a modest 2.1 percent revenue gain, while ads also buoyed publishing revenues 3.5 percent. In other words except for movies and ad-driven revenues there's stil core weakness this premium content provider's domain. Combine this with the recent Reuters earnings report that is only moderately hopeful that successful cost-cutting can keep ahead of continiung softness in their core financial sector revenues enough to post some black ink this year and you don't get a happy picture in general for premium content outside of ad revenues. Lots of tea leaves to interpret here, but bottom line is that premium content providers have to continue to become much more adept at leveraging the value of contextual content. Effective workflow has been one leading option to date beyond ads, but there's far more that needs to be done to get premium content on the track to long-term health.

Just a few months ago at an event in San Francisco reps from Dow Jones News were sniffing at the idea of RSS as a serious news medium; how things change when one listens to their readers. The WSJ Online crew has announced in emails to its readers the availablility of a headlines-only feed to its readers. The FAQ page for this new service is careful to mention that it's only for the use of individual readers and to restate the applicability of license terms and offers a full range of headlines, essentially equivalent to its email service with similar link-backs. This is still far from a full-blown commitment to RSS as a news distribution medium, but it is at least a tentative step in the right direction towards this concept. With a little rights managment thrown onto this capability the Journal and other major outlets can enter the world of peer-driven news object distribution fairly easily. In time, of course.

A newly announced study by content personalization vendor ChoiceStream indicate that a 64 percent of Internet users would provide preference insights in exchange for personalized product and content recommendations and 56 percent would provide demographic data such as age and gender as a part of that collection. It's a vendor study so I take out my grain of salt accordingly, but it's a pretty strong indication that people understand the value of allowing content services to serve them better according to their interests. What's notable is that this compliance is for personalization and not general access. The flourishing of "to serve you better" registration requirements for many news sites does little to return value of any kind to the person submitting to these proliferating and redundant requests. If you're promising to serve people better then follow through on your promises with more than marketing materials: build your responsiveness into your services.

Online Ad Dollars Set to Match, Then Go Ahead of Magazines'
Google IPO ready to go
Oxford to Move Journal to Full Open Access
MSN Launches Newsbot in U.S.
AP Looks Into Enhanced Online Search Tool
Reuters Tops Profit Views But Cautious
Patriot Act Used to Enforce Copyright Law?
FindLaw Acquires Hubbard One
FT Interactive Data Introduces SIRS Intra-Day; SIRS is No Longer Just an End-of-Day Service
Interwoven Chosen Winner for Document Management Category by Law Office Computing Magazine Readers

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The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System that allows commercial publishers to provide persistent links and metadata for published online content is starting to gain some steam in recent weeks as commercial publishers begin to focus on how to adapt this scheme to more of their product lines. DOI promises to offer a world in which content not only doesn't disappear but also can provide a changing array of services when users go looking for these persistent identifiers. Great tools, but what will it take to get DOIs rolling along for a broader array of content? Opportunities abound, but the exploitation of them remains stuck in the limited focus of DOI efforts to date.

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Blog's the word in big business
Microsoft Puts Slate Online Magazine Up for Sale
Bloggers go mainstream at US conventions
Free For All: UK STM Committee Report Calls For Broad Change
SEC to Assess XBRL for Supplemental Filings
Real 'frees' Apple's iPod player
Verity and Proxicom Join Forces to Develop Portal for the Healthcare and Life Sciences Markets
Survey: Majority of Internet Users Willing to Exchange Demographic and Preference Info for Personalization
Equinix Introduces First Traffic Exchange Portal; Announces New Customers
HyperFeed's HTPX Ticker Plant Platform Selected by Susquehanna

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A recent article by Alan Meckler, (if you download the article, go to page 16 of the PDF) the well-regarded Internet visionary and founder of Jupitermedia, makes a case that, as the headline of his article puts it, "time is running out for tech titles tied to print." Meckler posits that the imminent demise of those print technology magazines is driven by the better ROI advertisers can achieve on the Web. Why can the Web offer better ROI? Because, according to Meckler, vertically-focused Web sites "offer the advertiser an opportunity to rifle-shot his ad to an absolutely focused reader," because a Web site is cheaper to produce than a magazine is to publish, because "a new Web site only requires one writer to start," and because "its distribution cost is virtually zero."

While Meckler makes a compelling case for the rapid demise of print (with the pace varying by markets), it's important to recognize that advertiser excitement about the Web is based more on what we ought to be able to do than what in most cases we actually deliver. It's also worth noting that many of the characteristics of the Web that make it so attractive to publishers also create problems for publishers, and as the Web matures, some of its advantages will disappear. Here are some thoughts on those Web advantages identified by Meckler in his article:

Most print B2B publishers owe their existence to the fact that they have for decades offered their advertisers the opportunity to rifle-shot their ads to a group of absolutely focused readers. Given that, I am hard pressed to see the advantage of Web advertising, unless Web sites are delivering a higher quality or better targeted audience. I would contend, however, that most publishers are currently delivering neither. Most B2B Web sites attract online audiences two to ten times as large as their print audiences. Only a few people question how this can be. Were so many print publishers missing so much of their market for so long, or are all these new online readers marginal if not spurious? Nobody knows, just as very few Web sites have even the most basic sense of who is visiting their sites. I've looked at enough publisher log files and online registration databases to know just how much we don't know about our online audiences. Yes, you can target an audience of one with a Web site, but it's a fruitless exercise unless you confidently know who you are targeting. Contextual advertising is another powerful online advertising tool, one that doesn't require any knowledge of the visitor's identity, but unfortunately most of this revenue is flowing to the search engines, not the publishing industry.

That Web sites are cheaper and faster to launch than print magazines is a two-edged sword. Just as you can compete more easily on the Web, so can others compete against you. Business-oriented Web sites that accept advertising are everywhere on the Web. Most offer little value to advertisers, some are borderline frauds, but they're all clamoring for the same advertising dollar. The result is advertiser confusion, hesitation, and downward pressure on advertising prices. The well-known saying that, "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" goes to the heart of the problem. On the Web, start-ups look just like 100-year old multi-nationals. It's hard to tell who has substance and who will deliver results. So how do you distinguish yourself as a serious publisher?

Ironically, the answer may well be with a companion print product that can reach the not insubstantial segment of the market that prefers print. That's presumably why TechTarget, an online tech publisher Meckler cites in his article, launched print magazines well after it had become successful on the Web. The key is to lead with your Web product, not your print product, and possibly even position the print product as a premium-price supplement to the online product. The technology is just about ready to handle some serious innovation in this area.

As to the ability to launch a Web site with a single writer, I see an apples-to-oranges comparison here. Those who write for the Web aren't inherently more productive than those who write for print, so if your Web site has fewer writers, your Web site will also have fewer stories. If Meckler is suggesting that you can bootstrap a Web launch with modest content, adding more and better content if the site proves itself financially, I believe that the window to operate this way is rapidly closing. The fight for audience mindshare is more intense than I have ever seen, and if your target audience barely has time to read top-notch content, imagine their interest in perusing second-rate content.

I'd make a similar observation on the notion of the Web having virtually zero distribution costs, a technically accurate statement if you are trying to contrast paper and printing costs with Web pages. Yet the reason Web distribution is virtually free is that those who want your information need to come and pick it up, and therein are some serious costs. Search engine optimization and marketing represent substantial and growing costs for many publishers, who spend this money because they understand that, just as in print, you need to find your audience. Only then do the wonderful economics of Web publishing kick in.

Print publications have survived predictions of their imminent demise for nearly 20 years. That said, this time I think it's serious. What's different now is the widespread, fundamental shift in the way users access, read and use information. The future is clearly about speed, the ability to apply information, convenience and personalization. None of those are strengths of print. So Meckler's points should be heeded, but it should also be noted that the online medium still has a way to go to prove itself as an effective advertising vehicle, and that the transition from print to online publishing is neither easy nor automatic.

Users Sidestep Required Logins For Content Sites
Report on Sept. 11 finds home on Net
Open Arms for Open-Source News
RSS Gains Traction as More Publishers Offer Feeds
Blogging: A world stuck on itself
$5 Million Gift to Harvard Supports Open Collections
When a graphic is worth a thousand words in site search results
Interview with Jenna Freedman on anarchist and zine librarians
ePocrates Introduces 'Essentials' Mobile Clinical Reference Suite
Loudeye Announces 16 New Customer Contracts in Its Overpeer Piracy Protection Business

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Array of New Rivals For Ad Dollars Slows Comeback of Print
Copyright Bill to Kill Tech?
Thirteen Ways of Looking at...Digital Preservation
EMC Blending Content, Storage
Consumers Want Personalized Content
Allscripts & Wolters Kluwer Health Sign e-Prescribing and Content Distribution Agreement
McGraw-Hill Professional Applies Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to AccessScience Content
LexisNexis Launches New Search Capabilities for BlackBerry
Entire Collection of MarketResearch.com Reports Now Available Through Factiva
DepoNet Debuts a Free Web Site Linking Program for Professional Legal Associations and Organizations

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An email press release from LexisNexis announces the addition of simplified search capabilities for LexisNexis content from Blackberry devices (product page), along with in-place access to content alerts via the LexisNexis Publisher service. Needless to say a handy move, but it begs the point of how people are using content today in professional circles. With so many devices and collaborative schemes using those devices, being able to store premium content from services such as LexisNexis locally and onpass it to colleagues is becoming a more key factor in ensuring productivity. Kudos for the interface, but hoping to see some more sophisticated developments in using increasingly mobile and contexual user devices with increasingly mobile and contextual content distribution.

A mosey out to the mailbox just now yielded a flier from Blockbuster announcing unlimited film "rentals" for $24.99 a month (first month at $14.99) - AKA subscription movie content. Fighting both premium and on-demand cable and a surging market for movie downloads, Blockbuster has little choice but to try something new, and all-you-can eat subscriptions may be just the trick. Subscriptions are still a very valuable business model, and it may be just the thing to help other media sectors whose unit sales have been suffering. Part of the trick is to have "point of sale" capabilities within the model to add margins - be it a chocolate bar, a DVD or a $250 dollar report, depending on your content and your needs. This is where contextual advertising offers a wealth of possibilities for premium content that have barely been exploited.

My first impulse was to be underwhelmed by the recent Microsoft announcement that they are planning to buy back some $32 billion of its stock over the next four years and provide extraordinary dividends to shareholders (total package about $75 billion), but perhaps it's because I've heard this song before. Was it not long ago that then-Reuters CEO Peter Job announced returning millions of its "cash mountain" to shareholders who rightly deserved it? Some four years later Reuters no doubt would have yearned to have some of that buffer available in its lean times as it suffered through being unable to buy a clue as to how to attack the content marketplace effectively. Reuters may have come through that period a better and more efficient company for the trouble, but it was hardly the result of feeding shareholders with monies that could have gone to product investment. Microsoft is essentially admitting to middle age and an inability to provide effective earnings per share in its current diluted state. The move will do much to prop up per-share earnings in these leaner times, but does little to restore any hint of growth luster to the stock. In the meantime, much of that $75 billion may go from investors' hands into other companies that may have more innovative ideas as to how to attack content technologies. Companies which in turn Microsoft may buy in time, I imagine. Hmmm, if you can't buy a clue, why not pay people to find one for you...?

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) has announced the formation of a new Competitive Intelligence Division, a special interest group that will be aimed at the same audience of the unaffiliated Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP). The street wisdom these days seems to be that SCIP has lost some of its energy, which is ironic, since content tools for providing better competitive intelligence capaiblities have been improving dramatically over the past few years. Some of the answer may come from organizational challenges in their membership base: like their corporate library bretheren, CI staffs oftentimes are finding themselves becoming more part of the content technology infrastructure support world, helping to design portals and to integrate in content sources from both internal and external suppliers to solve competitive intelligence needs within the context of broader content solutions. In this sense the SLA moves makes a lot of sense, as info pros find themselves wearing many different kinds of hats these days, including and certainly not limited to competitive intelligence. SCIP can be expected to survive for now, but the merging disciplines of managing content in today's institutions are making it more difficult to look at these disciplines in isolation any more. While that may be bad news for many specialist associations, it's probably better for people trying to come together to solve the increasingly complex issues of today's content universe.

Growth of Web Use in China Slows
Group calls for copy protection Rosetta stone
Checklist for Building the Ideal News Web Site
Google-envy and the Quest for Local Search
JISC, Gale negotiates free electronic reference data for UK colleges
Jane’s Information Group Selects Verity K2 Catalog
Information and Intelligence Leaders Aviation Week Group and Forecast International Form Partnership
Factiva Appoints Intermark as Sales Agent in India for Sales to Domestic Organizations
SLA Creates New Competitive Intelligence Division to Attract CI Professionals Worldwide
IBM Partners with AtHoc to Extend Upcoming DB2 Information Integrator Enterprise Search Capabilities

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Apple's iPod is of course popular amongst college-age young adults for its entertainment capabilities, but in the broader scheme of things it's a processor with an operating system, rights managment and storage. No wonder Duke University has announced that this popular platform has been selected for a major experiment in providing administrative and academic content to incoming students this fall, including content typically distributed on CD-ROMs and DVDs. The ability of devices like iPods and Microsoft's new Portable Media Center to manage rights-protected content from any number of sources on a platform that individuals can use in any number of professional or personal environments places yet more emphasis on content providers having strategies that are oriented towards delivering useful content objects to multiple platform environments. As noted on today's New York Times (REGISTRATION), there are also numerous chubby multifunctional handhelds developing out of mobile phones and PDAs that are competing for more content than ever before. Platform profligation adds many wrinkles to the "workflow" approach to content integration, wrinkles that are likely to make it increasingly difficult for the content providers themselves to enable workflow solutions cost-effectively across a wide range of content presentations. Best to make sure that your content object strategy is solid before hanging you hat on software solutions that may be left behind as platforms of choice change rapidly.