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| Monday, April 30, 2007 |
  Today's announcement of the acquisition of ClearForest by Reuters highlights the shifting value proposition for business information services in the face of a marketplace that needs better information and ideas to compete in a real-time economy. ClearForest is one of the pioneers of mining content from Web sites, weblogs, corporate filings and other sources for businesses seeking to make sense of the sea of content that doesn't reside in neatly structured databases. ClearForest's mining and semantic analysis techniques allow unstructured content to tell tales that can lead to faster evaluation of financial opportunities, customer support issues and other mission-critical functions. ClearForest's modules that analyze news stories to develop data that can support automated securities trading as well, underscoring the need to treat the Web and internal unstructured sources as sources of content that can have immediate impact on operations and client perceptions as much as real-time financial quotes and news tickers have had in the past. In other words when the world is one big database everything in that database can have a potential impact on business operations. Structured databases still matter for maintaining "golden sources" of content for specialized operations but the ability of technologies such as ClearForest to create on-demand content structure are placing more pressure on subscription database suppliers to deliver more value to their clients - value that relies oftentimes on unlicensed sources of unstructured content. It's a smart move by Reuters at a good time, picking up a company with mature technology that needed a more publishing-savvy management structure to accelerate its growth to the next level. While the fit with Reuters' existing client base is obvious, one wonders how this will play against the recent jettisoning of Reuters' interest in its Factiva joint venture with Dow Jones. I wouldn't expect anything right away in a competitive direction from Reuters to circle back against Dow Jones and other general business information competitors but expect the already generalized capabilities of ClearForest to offer Reuters some very interesting leverage points that they may use to offer high-value services to business information consumers in the not too distant future. Labels: ClearForest, Deals Partnerships and Sales, Reuters
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:15 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM |
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| Sunday, April 29, 2007 |
TrendsDominance is spelled with a "G" these days...Google Passes Microsoft, Yahoo as Most-Visited Site Bloomberg News Google scary now? Personal Health Records, sponsored by Google, next ZDNet Google rises at Yahoo's expense CNET News Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust: Why Did DoubleClick Turn Down Microsoft? John Battelle's Searchblog 'Frienemy' Google Not a Threat (Yet) to Traditional Ad Sales MediaShift While Google eyes new arenas for expansion... Google warns of limited innovation in enterprise content management Computerworld UK Google Courts Broadcasters with YouTube Ads VNUNet New players in online entertainment gear up for a shot at YouTube and iTunes... Eyevio - Sony Launching YouTube Rival on Friday Mashable Joost gets blue-chip sponsors IHT Amazon set to launch online music store Times Online New model for sharing: Free music with ads NY Times via Content Agenda Jobs says Apple customers not into renting music Reuters Which is more significant, a few portals managing half of online ads or countless others owning the rest...? The Short Tail of Advertising Micro Persuasion As social media gains more widespread trust and authority... Pew: 1/3 of US Online Adults Consult Wikipedia Micro Persuasion Wikipedia ponders selling ads Toronto Star via Content Agenda Traditional publishers are challenged to innovate... USATODAY.com, Reports Traffic Spike in Registrations Web Site Host DIrectory Philadelphia Journalism's New Order The New York Times* WashingtonWatch Becomes A Wiki Web Pro News AllThingsD: Really Live This Time paidContent.org But innovation is not staunching the steady decline of print revenues... New York Times Shareholders Withhold 42% of Votes Bloomberg News Tribune Opens Offer For Half of Its Shares WSJ Online* Two Tribune Papers Announce Job Cuts WSJ Online* Papers' Web Hopes Dim a Bit WSJ Online* Magazines, Online And Off Forbes Or stemming the flow of aggregation to user-defined venues... From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet The New York Times* NetVibes: In Search of the Perfect Web Page Slate via Content Agenda Newsvine Relaunch: Build Your Own News Site TechCrunch Social Bookmarks: Not for Bloggers Only ClickZ Networks Or the flow of investment to new content production methods...
More Thoughts On Web 2.0 Expo Read/Write Web Wireless Startups Searching for VC Dollars GigaOM The Chinese marketplace for content is heating up...Baidu Outperforms, Revenue Doubles Year-On-Year paidContent.org Xinhua Finance Media Deals For Two New Regional Magazines Being Launched By China Telecom PR Newswire via Sys-Con Elsevier Partnership with Peking University Medical Press WebWire Google to Sell Online Ads on China Telecom Web Sites Bloomberg News But the rules of China's content game are still up for grabs... Communist Party to 'purify' internet Asia News Yahoo sued for providing data on Chinese dissidents ComputerWorld Court orders Yahoo China to unlink 229 songs in copyright case decision South China Morning Post The EU tries to get its hands around piracy but its solutions may isolate Europe from innovation... Controversial copyright directive passes European Parliament Ars Technica URGENT! Europeans! Last chance to save Europe from worst copyright law in the world! BoingBoing Fair use gets a reprieve as Viacom backs off part of a key claim against YouTube... Comedy Central parent Viacom acknowledges it erred in asking YouTube to yank a parody AP via LA Times What a novel concept, don't pin your content's hope on one choke-point technology... Glickman calls for DRM interoperability Content Agenda In other major trends in content this week... Book sales rise in February Times Record News According to Gartner we all will go virtual Really Simple Sidi GE Shares Rally on Citigroup's Push for Unit Spinoffs; NBC Targeted Bloomberg News Yapta Will Be Awesome For Heavy Travelers TechCrunch How the Internet is Reshaping Real Estate RIS Media Simultaneous VOD release bad for DVD sales Video Business /Content Agenda Best Practices Responding to Andrew Keen’s Anti-Web 2.0 Manifesto P2P Foundation We need open wireless SmartMobs The Participation Ladder and Its Impact on Marketing and PR Micro Persuasion iCrossing Study Finds Most Mobile Internet Users Connect to Search Phone Content.com Newspapers Debate Online Reader Comments The New York Times* OCLC’s WorldCat Local: A Promising Development for Library Patrons Information Today Blog Publishers Reveal Profitable, Web 2.0 Secrets to Climbing Google's Page Rank System PR Web User-Generated Content Delivers More Bang for Your Online Marketing Buck According to Study MarketWire Thoughts on the Hive Mind O'Reilly Radar Using Unstructured Business Content in Business Intelligence B-eye-to-eye Network Cool Tools Mindtouch Launches Expanded Wiki Solution Mashable Meshly is Twitter Plus Digg Mashable Tablus Brings Next Generation Content Discovery to Large Enterprises PR Newswire Social Media is Proving a Big Hit for Global Corporations Inside and Out, but Risks Remain PR Newswire Medical software: Large content in small packages ZDNet View the voice of the mob Smart Mobs Twango: YouTube meets Flickr meets Odeo (sorta) Download Squad Kyte: It's Like Twitter That Moves Read/Write Web RIM offers BlackBerry without the BlackBerry IT Business CA New 3-D layers from AIA on Google Earth Google Blog AttenTV turns Web surfing into eerie spectator sport CNET News
Deals, Partnerships & Sales Autonomy Exercises Option To Buy Blinkx; Merges With Its Consumer Division; Will IPO It In London paidContent.org Silverchair and McGraw-Hill Launch New Online Pharmacy Education Resource for Students PR Newswire via PR-Inside ABM Partners With iCopyright on Anti-Piracy Tagging and Content Licensing Program for Members MarketWire Elsevier Selects Rightslink(R) for Online Copyright Permissions BusinessWire ProQuest CSA And MLA Announce Online Reference And Newspaper Deal Managing Information American Astronomical Society Selects Institute of Physics Publishing As New Publishing Partner SpaceRef.com NewspaperDirect Breaks 500-Title Mark With Addition of Singapore's Prestigious "Straits Times" PR Newswire via Sys-Con Media Reuters and Barclays Wealth Sign Global Deal for 800 Desktops BusinessWire MindTouch Partners with SignOnSanDiego on Strategic Wiki Initiative BusinessWire Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service Reuters via CNET Products, Markets & People ScienceDirect Embraces New Web Applications With Latest Release PR Newswire Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Launches Sprig.com PR Newswire Salesforce.com Unveils First AppExchange Incubator - Fostering the Future of Entrepreneurship PR Newswire Promise of Science to search Dutch doctoral theses Really Simple Sidi Wolters Kluwer Health Appoints Mark Spiers as President & CEO of its Healthcare Analytics Business PR Newswire via Sys-Con AOL Launches AOL.in IT News Online IAC Advertising Solutions Announces Contextual Advertising Product PR Newswire Hoover's Announces "The Hoover's Index" List of the Top 1,000 Companies Most Searched eMediaWire Exalead Enhances one:search Platform with Addition of Vertical Search Capability PR Newswire via TechWhack Wiley announces the launch of Anatomical Sciences Education EurekAlert Really Strategies Releases RSuite CMS Version 2.0 with Enhanced Editorial and Production Tools BusinessWire Endeca Unveils the Next Generation of the Guided Navigation Experience BusinessWire via TMCNet Elsevier Extends ScienceDirect ArticleChoice to Academic Institutes Worldwide PR Newswire Labels: summaries
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:40 PM |
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| Friday, April 27, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM |
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| Thursday, April 26, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 6:48 PM |
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 The EconSM event is living up expectations for a great networking environment, including bumping into a new company called Edgeio, which provides classified ad systems on a white label basis for publishers of all kinds. The concept behind Edgeio is fairly simple but compelling: use their technology to build up easy-to-track classified ads from individuals and get them placed contextually in appropriate content. You can use just the technology to build your own ad service or syndicate in content from publishing partners using Edgeio. The publishers are in complete control of how ads are priced (or not) with Edgeio taking a percentage of revenues, typically 20 percent. This has good use for publishers in general, but it appears to be especially well positioned for social media, especially Wiki-based microcommunities. As communities grow they can spawn of new microcommunities that can use Edgeio to exchange ads with the parent community and to draw in other highly related communities. There's a lot of talk about scalability in online advertising and marketing at EconSM today but not much talk yet about how classifieds are the perfect one-to-one marketing medium for social media. Expect tools like this to thrive for highly targeted social media content - and to form the base for tools that help higher-powered marketers to reach customers on a one-to-one basis. Labels: advertising, business models, econSM, media, Social Media, Technology, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 4:14 PM |
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 Maybe I am getting jaded but as good as some of the events that I've attended and helped to organize have been as of late it's been many years since I've attended an executive-level conference that's had as much energy and buzz as EconSM. About five hundred of paidContent.org's closest friends decided to pop in at the Beverly Hilton to hear an all-star lineup of leading publishers, technologists and other industry heavies that you rarely find in one spot. The agenda for the day: every angle on making social media pay that one could hope to cover. As usual, I'll post links here to the detailed coverage of each segment of the program that we post on our Events weblog. I'll be posting a News Analysis piece later this week covering this event and aspects of the recent Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. CEOs Speak UpSocial Media Meets MarketingSocial Media Meets HollywoodSocial Media Meets NewsSocial Media Meets Mobile MediaSocial Media Meets DealsLabels: econSM, events
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:37 AM |
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 Bumping into Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson at the pre-event EconSM mixer tonight was a real pleasure - especially since Newsvine has just launched its new "Evergreen" release, which includes a smorgasbord of new features and sources. Mike was pumped up about the modular design of the new Newsvine front page that allows a user to add and content modules in a drag-and-drop design - including modules that allow one to aggregate headline RSS feeds from major news suppliers such as The New York Times, the Washington Post. Local news and weather get their fair exposure as well. But to me the best things about this redesign are the simple and obvious ones that help to highlight the increasingly powerful contributions from Newsviners themselves. The listing of AP headlines in the upper right corner of the home page are now replaced by an enhanced display of the top news story seeds (bookmarks) from Newsvine contributors, followed by a real-time feed of stories with new seeds and comments. The top AP story is still featured in the middle column but with robust contributions from its members Newsvine can afford to highlight their efforts as a default mode. There are merits in each of the the social media news services available today but Newsvine seems to be excelling in developing a community of contributors who are more than just bookmarkers and commenters. Newsvine creates a good share of its own original content, including breaking news from contributor "Killfile" on the recent Virginia Tech shootings. As highlighted in our new research paper on social media best practices Newsvine maintains a " Code of Honor" for its members that its lead contributors are intent on using to encourage quality content. The contributions may vary quite a bit in quality nevertheless but an environment that encourages quality more than specific outlooks is a crucial factor in attracting contributors who can find and create content worth reading and discussing. With the Evergreen features Newsvine is allowing its leaders to be seen as leaders more emphatically - and increasingly they're up to the task. Add in Evergreen's ability to blend in mainstream news and information from popular and local sources and it gets that much easier to stick around and catch the real-time news buzz that Newsvine is perfecting one post at a time. It's a highly competitive field out there for social media news services, especially as major portals such as Yahoo and MySpace become more proficient in blending in news contributions from users, so Newsvine's future is hardly guaranteed any more than any other emerging service. But if you're looking for an example of a social media news portal that gets an awful lot of things right you could do far worse than to use Newsvine as your template for success. Labels: Newsvine, Social Media, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:10 AM |
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| Wednesday, April 25, 2007 |
 Forbes.com has announced a new feature for its business news and information Web site called Corporate Org Chart Wiki, a tool that allows anyone to add their views of who reports to whom in the corporate world. The use of the term "Wiki" is a bit of a misnomer here, as the interface bears little resemblance to a traditional user-generated Wiki database, but in concept it's not too distant a relative. Anyone can create or edit an org chart using a drag-and-drop graphical interface to define reporting relationships and to add additional bio information in a sidebar area. Well, at least that's the concept. In trying the tool out on some execs at the Ford Motor Company the drag and drop function worked in a very herky-jerky sort of way and a tool that would supposedly let one roam across a chart larger than the display window didn't seem to operate at all. There's some good thought given to the design of this feature but "Beta" might be a generous description of its capabilities at this point. More importantly there's no real interactivity with this information and other information on the site: it's a standalone feature that doesn't have any community content built around the org chart function. In concept everyone would love to have a "real-time org chart" built up from people's direct knowledge of an organization but in reality there has to be a sense of ownership for that content as much as in any other social media product. Without even a login ID or some sort of online "handle" to provide attribution on edits most business people would be loath to trust information of this kind for any serious kind of use. There is tremendous potential for business information built in a social media environment, as evidenced by companies such as Jigsaw and LinkedIn, but it takes more than some tech tools and a label to create successful content services from social media. It takes first and foremost an environment in which a community of editors builds a reputation for reliable contributions. Forbes Corporate Org Chart Wiki is an interesting concept but I suspect that it will take someone who is more willing to take the concept beyond a half-hearted add-in to a media site and into the core of a more enterprise-oriented business information service to make this concept take off. In the meantime it's a tool worth doodling with for a few minutes to get some ideas as to how to take this concept to the next step. Labels: Forbes, Social Media, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 7:53 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 7:44 PM |
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| Tuesday, April 24, 2007 |
 I was very excited to learn about the Answers.com AnswerTips capability a few weeks back but never got around to pushing out the tool to ContentBlogger. Well, in the process of rolling out a template change for ContentBlogger recently to highlight our SIIA 2007 CODiE award for Best Media Blog the AnswerTips feature was pushed out. What does this mean to you? Double-click any word on ContentBlogger and you'll see - you get a little pop-up with a definition for that word and related content links.  The net effect of this tool is a little more clear when you try it a little carelessly. In the example on the left I double-clicked on the word "conversion" and the tool picked out nearby words to provide a definition of the term "cost per conversion." Click on the word "missing" further along and it picks up the word next to it to return the definition for "missing link." Neat. Other words I am less crazy about because they return links to other weblogs and content sources instead of reference content from Answers.com, but if someone is in research mode that's probably a good thing for them. If this were an ad-supported site I'd probably feel somewhat different, though. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think. The reminder link is at the bottom of each page - we try not to highlight technology partnerships in ContentBlogger to maintain an objective presentation of information - so you'll have to remember that it's there for now. But it's there. Our thanks to Answers.com for a handy tool that's a clever, low-key way to embed value-add content into weblogs. Labels: Answers.com
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By John Blossom - posted at 3:26 PM |
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A new research report announced by online ad network BlueLithium provides some interesting insights as to how valuable social media sites are as an advertising medium. When comparing ads shown on non-social media sites to social media sites, the ads shown on non-social media sites had a 32 percent higher rate of converting users into action-takers. However, due to the lower cost of advertising on social media sites, the cost per conversion for non-social media sites was 58 percent higher. This would imply that there's a a considerably lower cost per conversion via social media, but there's a flip side to this stat. A second phase of the study revealed that the conversion rate of ads shown on non-social media sites from the comScore top 250 was 175 percent higher as compared to social media sites. BlueLithium points out that the non-social media comScore 250 sites have a resulting 7 percent higher cost per conversion as compared to social media sites. So if you're going with a leading media site you're going to do well on conversions both from a penetration and cost of conversion standpoint as compared to social media. However, this data may be sidestepping one of the most important aspects of a social media site - their ability to create conversations on a more personal level. To some degree existing advertising services, being more tailored to major media outlet content, may not be providing the most effective messaging for social media sites. Social media has enormous potential for providing high multiples through advertising but the missing link may be to be able to target the people available through social media outlets in a personal enough way to take advantage of social media's ability to play to audiences as peers. It's nice that social media is a cost-effective medium for creating conversions but I'd rather hear that social media is worth its weight in gold in creating conversions. All in time. Labels: advertising, Research, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:48 PM |
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 I was prone to thinking that Twitter was "yet another social media login" that would fast become another time-waster, but the buzz is becoming rather deafening so I finally broke down and set up an account. Twitter is basically a SMS-compatible messaging tool that allows one to broadcast text messages to networks of selected friends and, by default, the world. A Twitter profile allows one to get messages on any popular instant messaging service as well as on a mobile phone or online via a Web site, an embedded widget or an RSS feed. This uber-framework allows people to catch their network of contacts wherever they may be - and to shoot them little live observations. Twitter messages can pack a fair amount of insight into a short space so some have begun to look at it as a "microblogging" service. As with blogs the medium is only as good as the message: do people really want to know every little twist of your day? Or, on the other hand, you can get over-enthusiastic about the medium and let go on a topic that gets broadcast a little too soon for its own good - as Steve Rubel noted recently. From this standpoint Twitter is more than a messaging service - it's a publishing medium that allows people to reach both micro-communities and the world as a whole. For people on the go who are shifting constantly between mobile devices and computer keyboards Twitter allows micropublishers to keep up with their social network more efficiently than either platform alone could manage. Probably the most compelling aspect of Twitter from a publishing standpoint is its ability to onpass key URLs very quickly to people on the go. The next logical step would be to use Twitter as a service that will pop up content automatically for connected friends to share simultaneously via a browser. Instead of just social bookmarking we would then have social viewing - like having sixty people in the living room all playing with the TV remote at the same time. Twitter has its moment in the sun for now but if it cannot keep up the pace of development to stay abreast of people who want to share more than just little text messages effectively it may see its time come and go fairly rapidly. In the meantime, though, it's a convenient way to let people when you're off to the airport, down to the store for a jug of milk, sealing a deal or snapping up an award. Getting ahead of the real-time content curve will be all that more difficult as a result. Labels: Technology, Trends, Twitter
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:10 AM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:00 AM |
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| Monday, April 23, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 3:02 PM |
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| Sunday, April 22, 2007 |
Conde Nast is nothing if not a contrarian publisher at times, so it's not out character for them to be launching Portfolio, a new business magazine that is loaded with business advertisers new to Conde Nast publications, according to The New York Times. Portfolio covers serious business issues but it does so with a focus and style reminiscent of the chatty and sometimes catty fashion and lifestyle publications for which it is best known. While Portfolio may seem a fish out of water to more traditional news publications it's actually a very clever play at an interesting time. Print appeals very well to those on the very high end of the economic scale, a fashion statement of sorts that speaks to the exclusive circles in which major executives find themselves. Why fritter with Twitter when you can relax on your G6 business jet with a copy of Portfolio next to your spouse's copy of Architectural Digest? It's an out-Forbes-ing of of Forbes' already elite outlook and a direct poke in the eye to McGraw-Hill's increasingly online-oriented BusinessWeek property. At the same time, though, there's quite a bit to be said for the Portfolio portal as well. Yes, it's not armed with in-depth data and other tools found typically on business information Web sites but it does have absolutely top-notch graphics and layout and a five-story top news summary that cuts to the chase with very brief summaries that accompany more in-depth features. Features include profiles of key executives, a roundup of clubhouse figures one is likely to encounter in the most elite social circles. It's not clear that many of Portfolio's print subscribers are likely to spend much time at the publication's online site but if they do they should feel comfortable browsing through its generously spaced and well-designed pages. There aren't many publishers who can deliver business information as a lifestyle publication of this sort and once there's one publication of this kind there aren't likely to be substitute products that will elbow their way into such a rarefied niche. Kudos to Conde Nast for recognizing an opportunity that plays to its strengths - for now. Labels: Conde Nast, media, Portfolio
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:15 PM |
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Trends
With its remarkable growth still unfolding...Google Displays Core Strength WSJ Online* And an increasingly dominant position in online ads...Google Achieves Behavioral Targeting Nirvana TMCNet Microsoft attacks Google-DoubleClick merger as anti-competitive DPA via Content Agenda Google: The Ad Dominator? BusinessWeek Google Continues to Exploit Antitrust Laws to Dominate Internet Advertising: NETCompetition.org PR Newswire Expect online ad deals and investment to gain heat... Ad Sector Eyeballed for Acquisitions New York Post Yahoo Strikes Ad Deal With More Papers The New York Times* As Google continues its innovation-fest... Google Rains On StumbleUpon Parade: Launches Direct Competitor TechCrunch Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History Search Engine Land Google Product Search Museum of Modern Betas Google AJAX Feed API Programmable Web Google Releases Improved Content Removal Tools Search Engine Journal Google Web Conferencing Software has Full Screen Video and Application Sharing Digital Inspiration YouTube is preparing to take professional and amateur publishers more seriously... YouTube filtering system almost ready Download Squad YouTube to split revenues with users Variety Al Jazeera English to YouTube AMEInfo As more serious content fills many social media channels... Local and National Papers Break News on Massacre - In Blogs Editor & Publisher Suddenly, the Web Is Giving Eggheads Something to Watch WSJ Online* MySpace Users Decide What News Is Fit to Print Tech News World MySpace News Launches Tomorrow Mashable O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference draws more than ten thousand but is Web 2.0 rhetoric matching its reality...? Web 2.0 Expo: Media Companies Confront Mortality Information World Live Blogging the Web 2.0 Expo Keynote O'Reilly Radar Live Blogging the Expo Day 2 Keynote (Part 1) O'Reilly Radar Live Blogging the Expo Day 2 Keynote (Part 2) O'Reilly Radar Users failing to interact with Web 2.0 sites IT Week Web 2.0 is all about the money SF Chronicle via Content Agenda Nothing more boring than the “narcissystem” Scobelizer Who's on top on the Web? Given some of the rating systems it's sometimes a hard question to answer... IAB urges comScore, Nielsen//NetRatings to submit to independent audit BtoB Online Interview: Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau paidContent.org Online revenues give a boost to mainstream media companies but fail to offset decaying print revenues... Dow Jones: Can online revenue replace old media sales? AOL Blogging Stocks Dow Jones profit tops estimates Reuters via Earth Times Times Co., Gannett and Tribune Co. Report Declines The New York Times* Online Classifieds Show Potential As TV, Cable And RadioEncroach On Newspapers’ Territory paidContent.org Nielsen Co. Reports Decline in 2006 Operating Income FOLIO: Magazine Revolution Health debuts with deep content and an emphasis on user contributions... AOL founder launches health care Web site CNET News Earth to radio: time to retune your value proposition - actually it was about time ten years ago... Radio Must "Reframe and Rebrand" Radio Ink An agreement with Clear Channel Radio Google Blog Clear Channel Is Said to Get Raised Bid The New York Times* When the going gets tough, the tough get going on glossy lifestyle mags for the wealthy... In a Troubled Time, a New Business Magazine The New York Times* In other major trends in content this week... Tellme Launches Free 411 Business Search Service TechCrunch Yahoo sued for providing data on Chinese dissidents ComputerWorld Google preparing to crack down on paid search links Ars Technica Media mine Web searches for readers AP via Yahoo! News Q&A: Jay Rosen and Assignment Zero USC Annenberg OJR Copyright deal clears way for European Digital Library EUobserver.com/ Content Agenda EMI Music revenue shrinks by 15% The Hollywood Reporter Best Practices Female Internet users outnumber males BoingBoing Maybe a Lavender Web Site Wasn’t How to Attract Women The New York Times* The Blog is the New Resume Borkado Open Letter: A Lesson Learned Twittering Micro Persuasion Academy Award-winning film released under Creative Commons BoingBoing Web 2.0 Tools Inspire Data Sharing Software PC World Offline or Online, Civility Depends on Each Community’s Tolerance MediaShift Giving Away Information, but Increasing Revenue The New York Times* How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words ProBlogger P2P, now for Pretty Much Everything GigaOM Web 2.0 Expo: Open Source Business Models Read/Write Web ARF finds slow b-to-b market research adoption, usability BtoB Online Cool Tools Swivel Makes Tasty Data Mashable A new tool from IBM to analyze unstructured text Really Simple Sidi LeapTag, RSS by tags Download Squad Top 5 from Web 2.0 Expo WebWare Searching without a query Google Blog Mowser Makes Sites Mobile Friendly Mashable Find the Blogosphere's Freshest Legal News Law.com Legal Technology Human Nature and XBRL EContent Magazine AuthorStream - Latest YouTube for PowerPoints Mashable Software extracts key content from images Vision Systems Design Attensa Feed Server Integrates Publishing, Search & Discovery Tools for Enterprise Web Feed Workflows eMediaWire Netvibes users to create their own Universes CNET News LeapTag - a new way to find online content ZDNet DIY online magazine publishing with PublicSquare Lifehacker Library Thing - "Facebook for books" Download Squad Clash of Titans: Microsoft’s Silverlight vs. Adobe’s Media Player Playfuls
Deals, Partnerships & Sales Generate Launches Media Solutions for Publishers & Content Providers PR Newswire Swets and MuseGlobal Break New Ground by Debuting Content Mining with Federated Search PRWeb blinkx to Power Multimedia Content for Portfolio.com TechWhack Elsevier partnership with Peking University Medical Press EurekAlert LexisNexis Teams with Elsevier to Offer Exclusive Scientific, Technical Journals BusinessWire Hitwise Acquired by Experian O'Reilly Radar LexisNexis to Distribute Martindale-Hubbell(R) Law Digest on Amazon.com(R) via "Print on Demand" BusinessWire HealthiNation Launches on Joost BusinessWire Nature and EMBO launch a new journal blog Really Simple Sidi CCH and Proxix Enter Sales and Use Tax Information, Solutions Partnership Agreement PR Newswire Groxis and Thomson Gale Partner to Provide Innovative Search Solution PR Newswire blinkx to Power Multimedia Content for Portfolio.com PR Newswire via Sys-Con Chockstone Acquires Peppercoin, Strengthens Its Position in Real-Time Loyalty Marketing Programs Chockstone Biowizard gets funding from MentorTech Really Simple Sidi Products, Markets & People S&P Adds Tools for Understanding Markets, Developing Portfolios to Investor Newsletter PR Newswire TheNewsRoom Announces Environmental, Science and Health News for Online Earth Day Coverage PR Newswire Mochila Unveils Cutting-Edge Multi-Media Player, adds Video Content Capabilities to Media Marketplace PRWeb Newstex Announces BlogAlerts(TM) Delivery Product for Content Providers and Enterprise Customers PR-Inside Generate Launches Media Solutions for Publishers & Content Providers PR Newswire Penton’s Farm Industry News and The Corn and Soybean Digest Launch Redesigned Web Sites BusinessWire Get WiseTo Social Issues: Thomson Gale Launches New Reference Web Site PRWeb Elsevier Releases New Nursing and Allied Health Journal Abstracts and Indexing Database ThomasNet Wolters Kluwer Financial Services Introduces CCH Capital Changes Compass PR Newswire Labels: summaries
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:01 PM |
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| Saturday, April 21, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 1:15 AM |
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| Friday, April 20, 2007 |
 What makes social media work in today's online publishing? What are the best practices for social media? To answer these questions Shore conducted an analysis of leading and emerging Web sites that use social media as a key attribute in their offerings. We looked at not just the trendy online consumer portals but as well key offerings in business media and older services that have made good use of social media to establish the value of their publications. This report outlines key best practices for social media publishing, as developed through an analysis of nine leading Web sites that incorporate social media offerings. The report provides detailed profiles of social media features found in ALM Legal Weblogs, Amazon.com, Flickr, ITtoolbox, LinkedIn, Newsvine, VerdictSearch, Wikipedia and Zagat, as well as sixteen key best practices recommendations for social media site development, further summarized into a two-page checklist for reviewing your own product plans. Click here for report details and purchasingLabels: Best Practices, Research, Social Media
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By John Blossom - posted at 3:02 PM |
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| Thursday, April 19, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:56 PM |
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:49 PM |
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BusinessWeek provides an excellent analysis of recent deals and acquisitions by Google, deals which are resulting in complaints from Microsoft to regulators about potential anti-trust violations as well as similar concerns about market dominance from NETCompetition.org. BW dismisses concerns about anti-trust violations in the Doubleclick deal by pointing out that their main focus is not on ad auctions: at least for now there will be no auctioning off of Google ads on the Doubleclick network. As the article notes, "Even with a Google-owned DoubleClick, publishers can still sell their display ads themselves and set the prices however they want." But the concerns about dominance are underscored by Google's announced deal with U.S. radio giant ClearChannel to sell 30-second ad spots on their radio stations via their dMarc radio advertising platform. Well, first let's put aside the somewhat unfortunate claims of anti-trust violations from a company that owns more than 90 percent of PC operating systems and word processing software worldwide and focus on the real question: is Google creating unfair business practices? This can get gray pretty quickly but overall I think that the answer is no. The opportunity to build or buy infrastructure that makes the most out of contexts in Web content has been around for more than a decade. Where most companies opted to focus on traditionally marketed intellectual property Google has been the only leading company to focus almost exclusively from its beginnings on creating and owning contexts for content. While Yahoo is excelling in amassing content from both users and publishers it dropped the ball on search technologies many times and is only now beginning to mount a serious challenge to Google's ad technologies and partnerships. Microsoft has had extremely ample time to develop competitive challenges to Google but has chosen instead to develop a very split strategy that tries to placate status quo-sensitive enterprises and publishers while also trying to develop improving but underdeveloped search and ad technologies. So to my ears I hear some people saying, "Hey, that's not fair, Google figured out what the leading value proposition for online content would be for the next few decades before we did." Is Google aggressive? You bet. Does some of the "don't be evil" charm wear a little thin at times these days? Certainly. Dominance can easily turn into unfair practices, so it would not be right to give Google a complete clean bill of health for all time in their acquisition plans. But for the most part the ball is in the courts of Google's competitors to build a better mousetrap. And that's the way that it should be, we're told. Labels: advertising, aggregation, Deals Partnerships and Sales, Doubleclick, Google
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:49 AM |
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 Industry awards are not a recognition that you are the best of anything in any absolute sense: this I know from being a judge for the SIIA CODiE awards for a few years running. Companies eager for recognition come forward, get weighed by industry experts and then are presented to the membership of the association sponsoring the awards for voting. So the CODiEs are above all a recognition from peers who have come to know you and your work in very specific contexts. It is in the full knowledge of this that we are truly humbled and honored by the judgment of our peers in the Software and Information Industry Association that ContentBlogger is the Best Media Blog for 2007. The team members and affiliates of Shore Communications Inc. who have labored for more than four years to produce this weblog do so to provide unbiased insight into the content industry that is valued by thousands of professionals like ourselves worldwide. Social media is above all other things a tool that allows peers to communicate effectively without the worry of whether what we are saying is the most influential word on any given topic in the eyes of the world as a whole. What really matters is that the people who we really care about and who value our opinions as peers and colleagues perceive and understand the value of what we do. From this standpoint, there could be no finer recognition for our efforts than a peer award such as the CODiE. Our thanks go out to the Board of Directors and the staff of the SIIA who work so hard on these awards, as well as to all of the judges who work very earnestly to filter the many prospective candidates for these awards. Our thanks go also to the many nominees who were up for this and other awards: it is an honor to be judged alongside your many fine efforts. Thanks also to Newstex and LexisNexis who distribute ContentBlogger to enterprise subscribers. But most of all we thank you, our loyal and passionate readers who come here to find insight, information and, on a good day, some wit and wisdom that might help you to know your markets, set your strategies and implement them with success. We are honored by your appreciation of our efforts and will bear your strong appreciation in mind as we continue to improve our communications with you. It's been a hoot. Labels: award, CODiE, ContentBlogger, SIIA
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:39 AM |
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:59 PM |
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| Monday, April 16, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:42 AM |
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 We're back in San Francisco for the SIIA Content Forum, which promises to delve into the best practices for media, enterprise and personal publishing via an all-star lineup of speakers and panels. Online news, mashups, convergence, workflow integration, managing search engine marketing and other great topics are part of this program. As networking allows we'll be blogging during the conference and posting links here to our Events weblog as it progresses. Keynote Address - Steven MR Covey on The Speed of TrustScott Moore, Yahoo! Media GroupUsing Mashups to Deliver Business Information"Undiscovered Genius" Ezra Ernst, CEO Swets North AmericaWhat Does Integration Mean to your Customers?Publishing 2.0 Models - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Publisher StrategiesEverything I Need to Know I Learned in Second LifeMichael Schoen, LookSmart, Ltd.Top Line - Who Pays for Content, Why and How?SEO - Yours, Mine or Ours?Vendor-Buyer Technology ShowcaseCEO PanelEnd-Note Address from Janice Lachance, CEO of SLALabels: events, SIIA Content Forum
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:57 AM |
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| Sunday, April 15, 2007 |
TrendsIf context is king, the coronation has just taken place... GoogleClick: Execs Explain $3.1 Billion Deal paidContent.org As Google's kingdom of context monetization grows ever larger...Google Continues Search Engine Dominance - Even In Verticals! Read/Write Web Google’s next advertising deal, DirecTV Venture Beat Google teams with PennySaver in ad, content sharing deal CNET News Google backs character-recognition research CNET News Google Targets Voice Searches WSJ Online* Google aims to usurp campus email systems ZDNet And that gets some folks with vested interests a little edgy... Microsoft, Google trade barbs on enterprise search ComputerWorld IBM hopes its social-networking software for the workplace will spur revenue and slow Google Boston Globe/ Content Agenda Why Google Isn't Stealing Newspaper Content TechDirt Business information publishers with a healthy mix of media and enterprise content assets are thriving... McGraw-Hill: Growth Strategy Solidly in Place Seeking Alpha Conversational content is buoying trade media publishers but social media is the key to their future... B-to-B Media Events' Revenue Surpasses Print FOLIO: Magazine Jimbo Wales slams his own product's lack of editorial quality... Wikipedia a force for good? Nonsense, says a co-founder Times Online But social media's parameters for quality depend greatly on the scale of the communities that it serves...Hyper-Local Citizen Media Sites Learn How to Serve Small Communities MediaShift Ignored intellectual property rights are subsidizing China's economic growth...U.S. to file piracy complaint against China CNN Money via Content Agenda Copyright charges against Beijing darken mood for upcoming dialogue Straits Times via Content Agenda Google China admits to unauthorized use of Sohu's character input software AFX via Forbes Well, they make great Christmas gifts... Publishing CEOs blogmenting on the future of reference books Really Simple Sidi In other major trends in content this week...CBS Gets Joost(TM) PR Newswire Bidders Shortlisted For Primedia’s Enthusiast Media Unit paidContent.org Get a taste of what search may look like in the next 5 years Really Simple Sidi Journalism Education Stuck in Same Oldthink Mode as Big Media MediaShift A Photo Trove, a Mounting Challenge The New York Times* A Changing Map for Digital Music WSJ Online* Martha Stewart redesigns Web site Reuters NBCU Signs Download-To-Own Deal With Germany’s T-Com paidContent.org Best Practices See How Easily You Can Become a Successful Blogger ProBlogger MindTouch CEO Ken Liu: Adding a Wiki Twist to Business Sites Tech News World iProspect Study Reveals 1 in 3 Internet Users Report Purchase Decisions swayed by Social Networking Promotion World What Bloggers Can Learn From… Indirect Earners ProBlogger Survey Gives Good Reviews to Online Product Reviews BrandWeek Cool Tools UpSNAP Pioneers Mobile Metasearch for Cell Phones dBusiness News YouTube model meets B2B Web casts on new site DMNews FeedBlitz enabling to subscribe to blogs with Twitter Library Clips Twitter as a business meeting or collaboration tool? CoWorking Gigya To Ease Widget Publishing On Social Networks TechCrunch A magazine that you can listen to Really Simple SIdi Free Barcode Creation Software Download Squad New APIs: Book Publishing and Gov Search Programmable Web MyQuire: Another Social Network For Productivity MyQuire
Deals, Partnerships & Sales Salesforce.com snags Koral’s Web 2.0 content management service ZDNet Blogs GrowthWorks Commercialization Fund Invests in Octopz Inc. CCN Matthews Dow Jones to Buy eFinancialNews WSJ Online* AskMeNow Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Expert System MarketWire via Sys-Con Fairfax Could Be a Merger Target As Australian Media Laws Change WSJ Online* Forbes Media Acquires Canadian Site Investopedia.com paidContent.org Aggregate Knowledge Raises $20 Million to Extend Leadership in the Online "Discovery" Market Aggregate Knowledge blinkx Partners With Break.com to Add Viral Web Videos to Search Index PR Newswire Yahoo ad deal with Viacom Download Squad LexisNexis Signs Agreement with TroyGould to Provide Online Client Development Products BusinessWire Harte-Hanks enters b-to-b data sharing agreement BtoB Online Endeca ousts Autonomy for information access at BT Computer Business Review Elsevier To Publish Phytochemistry Letters Medical News Today Products, Markets & People ProQuest CSA Adds Content to Illustrata and Illumina Information Today New Content Added To WestLaw ResultsPlus Center for Legal Information ON24 Inc. Launches Rich Media Network for Business and Technology Professionals Streaming Media Wetpaint adds private messaging to Wiki service WebWare TheStreet.com Adds Bank, Thrift, Insurer and HMO Financial Ratings to Free Proprietary Screening Tool BusinessWire Corporate Counsel Study Finds Need for Overseas Legal Services Continues to Grow BusinessWire CMP Launches Technology Marketing Resource Center on
BtoBOnline.com PR Newswire Labels: summaries
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By John Blossom - posted at 7:44 PM |
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| Friday, April 13, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:44 PM |
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 The Social Media Club is a growing network of social media enthusiasts from many different walks of life, including both the commercially-oriented online crowd as well as academics focusing on media studies. I was invited to speak on a panel for their April Boston area meeting a couple of months ago and so I found myself braving cats-and-dogs rain to join the group in Dedham, Massachussets last night along with other hardy New Englanders. The panel consisted of myself, Judith Perrolle of Northeastern University and Douglas Quintal of Emerson College considering the question of whether the bomb scare in Boston earlier this year triggered by a promotion for the Cartoon Network may have implications for social media. The short answer was: not really. This was a stunt by a mainstream media company that was using well-established "guerrilla marketing" techniques across the nation to put out a message on portable electronic displays - which in Boston were placed near and under key infrastructure points. Someone implied that perhaps backhandedly the promoters knew that this might get a rise out of the authorities - or that perhaps they even brought it to their attention. Who knows. The bottom line is that the City of Boston was not consulted, and in general good citizens try to keep the protectors of community interests in the loop. By contrast, social media is all about sharing communal interests and self-policing of boundaries of conduct by community members. In a sense social media is the exact opposite of guerilla marketing: since individuals already have access to powerful tools to create and contextualize content mainstream marketers come to their content to get into the communal flow of things. I think that Judith Perrolle hit the nail on the head when she characterized the ill-fated Cartoon Network campaign as "solid-state spam." But on the other side of the incident are the younger people who looked at the reaction in Boston and said "They don't get it." That's certainly valid from the perspective of the younger target audience for the Cartoon Network - we all know that if your parents get something it must not be "cool" - but it's also a sign of people who have come to accept that commercial messages can appear anywhere. Social media tends to extend this concept by its ability to make it easy for webloggers and other personal publishers to embed ads on their sites as well as content from other sites. For younger people this is kind of an extension to the logo-laden clothing and accessories that are pervasive in our culture: they "wear"brands on their content the way that they do going to school. So to them seeing the Cartoon Network or any other brand in a public space is not that big a deal. Social media, though, is not really the cause of this, just an extension of a pre-existing branded culture. But as social media matures I believe that people will become more sensitized to how they are using their personal brands cultivated via their social media persona to endorse other brands in personal and public spaces. Kids - and many adults - are beginning to understand more clearly when people are using advertising to support a personal and community function without prejudice and when the advertising is tainting a person's online persona. Doug Quintal pointed to research of 2,500 young people which indicates that the stereotype of social media enthusiasts as loners/losers does not pan out statistically: their use of social media is pervasive, with the proportion of loner/loser personalities in virtual spaces being about the same as in the real world. So as social media becomes more pervasive marketers are going to have to be increasingly sensitive as to how to present messages more authentically as participants in social media communities rather than as mere commercial wallpaper. Authenticity counts in social media more than artificial "underground" marketing. This was a fun group that stimulated a lot of thought-provoking discussion about social media and its impact on how we are communicating with one another. I may have second thoughts about taking another long slog through pouring rain to get to the Boston meetings but I look forward to other Social Media Club events in the future. Labels: Boston, events, Social Media, Social Media Club
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:31 AM |
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| Thursday, April 12, 2007 |
Om Malik notes along with many of the technology media digerati the recent expulsion of image hosting site PhotoBucket's content sharing widgets from the MySpace social media portal. The grievous charge against PhotoBucket? Ads. Along with content from the widget embedded in a MySpace page the viewer would get a PhotoBucket-provided ad. So in a twinkle of an eye PhotoBucket loses a distribution partner for its social media content. Mind you there's some pretty sad irony here in that MySpace gets content free from its millions of users and ad-free partners to generate ad revenue with near-zero editorial expense. It would seem only fair that MySpace recognize that others who are contributing to their revenue successes need to be compensated also. The rub in this equation is revenue sharing. Unlike ad-supported mashups like TheNewsRoom.com, which shares its ad revenue with distribution partners, PhotoBucket somehow didn't think it proper to compensate MySpace for the "rental" of their context to display its revenue-generating content. If they were a little more savvy PhotoBucket would have approached MySpace ahead of time and proposed a revenue split based on MySpace-embedded ad revenues. If they were more than a little savvy PhotoBucket would have set up a system similar to TheNewsRoom that allows distribution partners to set up a self-service license for ad-supported content. In either case both MySpace and PhotoBucket have shot themselves in the foot by eliminating a popular content feature that was adding value to audiences in MySpace. We've been talking for several years about how contextualizing content and not just ads would become the next great online revenue opportunity, so the storm of widgets invading social media properties should come as not surprise. But in an era of user-defined aggregation there needs to be a more automated regimen for determining when and how revenue-generating content can play alongside other commercially-supported content. With users constantly defining new contexts in which to share widgets and other embeddable content forms neither the services providing venues for those widgets nor the distributors of the content can afford to waste time in traditional licensing negotiations. The value of the contexts is far too fleeting to make them pay off effectively in many instances. Content producers using widgets for distribution also need to think more carefully about how to structure their offerings for partners with different commercial outlooks. Some content could be made available through free-only partners and additional content for those willing to allow ad-supported or fee-based revenue sharing. Whatever the regimen content producers taking advantage of social media tools to embed their content in various contexts need to remember that advertising is all about selling contexts, not content. When a widget or other social media tool is embedded in another site the value of the context requires both the content provider and the site provider to recognize that the value of the context created by these tools is the sum of both parts. As more and more users embed content in platforms of their choice media companies need to acknowledge that portals are not always going to be the play that gives them the best promise for contextualizing their content. We need to get to a point where we could have a MySpace widget that also embedded a PhotoBucket widget where a user wanted it. This is the new form of aggregation that will be most likely to pay off for publisher in the long run. All the world's a TiVo, so get your content ready for it to reside wherever it needs to - and to partner with whomever is there who has a right to share in the profits. Labels: Monetization, MySpace, PhotoBucket, Social Media, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:43 AM |
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| Wednesday, April 11, 2007 |
ZDNet reports on Salesforce.com's recent acquisition of Koral, a small content management company that focuses on bringing together unstructured content from enterprises into Salesforce.com's ASP-based sales management platform. Koral makes it easy for people to leverage SF.com's content synchronization capabilities to simplify the storage, sharing, searching and synchronization of office documents and emails - the very type of content that enterprise search engines and business information vendors are coveting increasingly for their own product plans. While SF.com enjoys support from many business information providers integrating subscription database content via its AppExchange online services store unstructured content offers another level of content value generation that trumps both I.T.-oriented office automation and search engine plays and publishers trying to define their own frameworks to organize user content as a business resource. Business Information 3.0 is about creating value out of whatever content is available wherever it is made available - and creating more value in moments of fresh content discovered in time to make a difference to the top line of today's enterprises. Like Google Salesforce.com is approaching the content business from the perspective of a software-as-a-service vendor that make every business information resource accessible in a framework that makes an immediate and tangible difference to people's lives. Many publishers don't quite grasp the concept that any content that helps to move business processes forward is business information worthy of their attention - leaving huge opportunities for content technology vendors to define the framework in which they develop their services. Today we see many vendors such as Hoover's, OneSource and Factiva integrating their business information into SF.com via AppExchange. With the Koral acquisition SF.com is laying down the gauntlet that challenges both publishers and I.T. companies to provide more combined content value than their highly cost-effective sales automation services. Increasingly this means mining content value from non-traditional sources such as corporate Web sites and delivering it as real-time updates to business information users. In the battle for business information desktops sometimes perhaps it pays to leave the desktop behind altogether... Labels: Business Information, Deals Partnerships and Sales, Koral, Salesforce.com, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:36 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:18 PM |
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| Tuesday, April 10, 2007 |
Tim O'Reilly's recent call for a blogger code of ethics has been picked up in a number of mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, which notes O'Reilly's collaboration with Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales to define minimum standards for editorial restraints in social media. The standards are a cross-breeding of typical journalism standards for such as respecting copyright, confidentiality and privacy as well as trying to apply minimal standards of editorial quality to comments left on weblogs and other social media outlets. Judging by some of the recent edits in the Wikia site on which the standards are being developed not everyone seems to be agreeing with their general thrust: some re-edits of the section on anonymous comments, for example, rejiggered the section that originally discouraged anonymous comments to read " We encourage anonymous comments. We allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than being anonymous, but discourage it as vain. We prefer that whistleblowers be shot on sight. " The guild-like suggestions being put forth are probably a constructive step in the right direction to allow social media participants to provide some reasonable level of self-policing and monitoring of contributions, but in fact these kinds of standards have been in place for quite some time at many major social media outlets. Newsvine, for example, has a " code of honor" that its members try to adhere to as they build articles and discussions around bookmarked news articles and original contributions. Standards for ethical behavior accepted by its contributors are essential to the success of any social media property. But one wonders how effectively these standards can be enforced from outside of individual communities. Will there be a ratings agency or "seal of approval" implemented that will provide both a carrot and a stick to encourage compliance with such standards? And even if such an enforcement capability were to exist, is there really a need for external judgment for social media properties? The ability for users to filter comments from unwanted contributors and to rate content may prove to be sufficient for individual communities to set their own standards for acceptable behavior and contribution quality without resorting to external arbitrary standards. A fundamental tension seems to be arising between "serious" social media and citizen journalists who say pretty much what they want to say. As more webloggers try to generate sustainable revenues and to attract financing there's a natural tendency to want to demonstrate that advertisers and investors can expect to find certain levels of civility that will make them feel comfortable about backing social media. But that's not necessarily going to give them the audiences that they're seeking. EarlyStageVC points out that some weblogs such as GigaOM and TechCrunch that have pushed hard to become "respectable" outlets for journalism have seen rapidly declining audiences in recent months. In trying to productize weblogs there appears to be a threshold past which audiences sense that the content is being over-orchestrated. Let's bring higher standards to social media, but if markets are indeed conversations then one has to accept that an honest dialogue is sometimes going to push up against some iffy thresholds of expression from some of the players in those markets. The primary power for editorial control should be in the communities who consume the content to express their perceptions of quality. Give people the right technology to express their perceptions and most webloggers are going to get the hint fairly quickly. There may be things to be said for peer pressure after all... Labels: Best Practices, Social Media, Tim O'Reilly, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:23 AM |
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Need to catch up on recent events in the world of content? Try our weekly headline summaries with embedded commentary. Click here to read our latest headline summaryLabels: summaries
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:15 AM |
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| Monday, April 09, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:54 PM |
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| Sunday, April 08, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:21 PM |
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| Friday, April 06, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:32 AM |
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| Wednesday, April 04, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:52 AM |
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The Guardian notes the release of EMI's first album distributed in a high-quality MP3 format without DRM controls, a policy that EMI will apply to all releases except for music from the Beatles' catalog. Individual tracks will be available for USD 30 cents more than the Apple FairPlay DRM-encoded tracks, though CNET News notes that EMI will continue to make tracks available via FairPlay and will not offer upgrades to people who already own FairPlay content. An entire album goes for GBP 7.99 - that's about USD 16, a typical going price. In sum EMI did the math and realized that there was a fairly specific and predictable amount of revenue loss that could be expected through online piracy and decided that the gain from increased exposure made non-DRM encoded content a cost-effective alternative. More importantly it gives EMI the ability to move its marketing beyond Apple's iPod and eliminate the artificial stranglehold that proprietary DRM had placed on its online distribution strategies. EMI is now free to manage its sales through whatever channels it sees fit - and in doing so open up more contextual points of contact with the purchasing public. This move is not likely to dent sales of the popular iPod any time soon but with more music being consumed on mobile phones and other trend-setting devices a platform-agnostic approach to content distribution will allow EMI to keep their content in the ears and minds of their audiences more easily - and increase their ability to keep its popularity flowing regardless of the platforms that users opt for. If there was a DRM scheme that was future-proof and non-proprietary it may have been otherwise but for now EMI has decided to adapt to the economics of users managing their content the way that they'd like to. And in the end that's a good thing for both EMI and their audiences if it makes their content more popular and usable. Hopefully music producers develop more enhanced packaging for their content that adds value to the underlying product and to their knowledge of how it is used and distributed. But until that can be done in a standards-based format the music industry appears to be ready to use existing standards as a way to reach audiences as efficiently as possible. Labels: EMI, intellectual property, mobile, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:47 AM |
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 BtoB Online covers the launch of the refreshed ZoomInfo business information portal, equipped with a much more usable interface and improved content quality. The home page features three main tabs: company searches by keyword or company name, people searches and job searches via content from Zoominfo's content partner Indeed. Company content and most of the other site content is ad-supported, while searches for people by keywords and company name are part of a premium package that includes more powerful search tools. An interesting addition to the home page is a tag cloud representing popular keywords used for searches on ZoomInfo - some of which seem to show left-over preferences from testing but which in the long run should give users a sense of the "buzz" being generated by business information users. It's interesting that the default search for Zoominfo is now keywords rather than company name, implying that the tool is useful for people trying to locate companies that offer specific products and services. A search for "flushometers" yields eight companies that seem to fit nicely, each with a summary of their strengths. One can refine their search with further clustered subcategorizations - in this instance "flushometer manufacturing"and "flushometer tank"are available - as well as by geography or annual revenues. A quick click of an icon next to the results adds the company profile into a Zoominfo "QuickList" at the bottom of the browser window; a user can define multiple QuickList folders for reference. Company profiles include revenues, number of employees, industrial classifications, Web site thumbshot and contact data - most of which is gleaned directly from Zoominfo's Web mining operations. A search results listing of competitors can be displayed by clicking on a link on the profile page; a competitive search for Sloan Valve Corporation yielded 29 potential competitors, most of which seemed to be very much in the thick of their competitive space. Ad-supported visitors can get access to personal profiles built from Web content, which provides a Web-derived employment history, references to key Web pages covering the person's activities and the opportunity to build social network contacts with the individual. Registrants can maintain this profile information if they would like it to provide more accurate information. A search for Factiva's Clare Hart yielded one seemingly accurate profile but other people with a more complicated professional life still challenge Zoominfo's improved semantic processing. A search on Presidential advisor Karl Rove, for example, yields a robust list of alter egos defined for Rove in the online press, including a number of epithets. Searching people by keywords or company names and titles yields an anonymous list of matches for ad-supported visitors, which can be converted into a listing with names associated with titles for premium PowerSearch subscribers. The shift to PowerSearch from free results gives somewhat different information, but with the additional filtering tools available in PowerSearch you can zero in on key contacts very quickly and get a list of probable phone numbers and email addresses. Gliding over a given contact name in the search results in PowerSearch mode pops up a summary of the person's profile page. Job searches work similarly overall, with filters for proximity, job types, job sources and company revenues. While the improved technologies in ZoomInfo seem to yield improved results in many instances, the notable improvement in this release is the professional-grade design of the interface. Functions are easy to navigate and are organized consistently from one function to another: there's little guesswork involved. It's easier to normalize company information online than personal profiles, so this edition of ZoomInfo rightfully emphasizes this capability. In doing so ZoomInfo is positioned as a very useful multi-purpose company mining tool that can help both purchasers and sales and marketing professionals zoom in on the right targets for their efforts very quickly. The more problematic personal profile information is only going to be as good as the Web itself in most instances but that in and of itself can make ZoomInfo a very useful tool for accelerated "Googling" of people in professional roles. And once one gets into the PowerSearch tools the information can help to accelerate prospecting with ZoomInfo's frequent update cycles. As we noted in our earlier news analysis on Zoominfo and Generate born-on-the-Web content is becoming the default "golden source" for corporate information, giving tools such as ZoomInfo a strong leg up as a structured reporter of how companies have positioned themselves in the marketplace. This shows up especially when one takes advantage of the on-the-fly clustering of company profiles: pop in a term like "Wiki" that's not in any industrial classification system and you get a relevant listing of companies that provide Wiki software and services. More traditional business information tools offer more sopisticated services and broader data sets to mine, but this edition of Zoominfo serves as a reminder that Web-first business information services are becoming a key resource for today's professionals. Labels: Business Information, products, Zoominfo
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:29 AM |
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| Tuesday, April 03, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:54 PM |
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Two major conferences focusing on business information services point towards two very different approaches to creating revenues and profits from today's enterprise and media markets. Yet both database publishers and media companies are circling around many of the same opportunities to develop value for business information markets. The battle for the future of business information has just begun in earnest, with no clear winners in sight but with many "old guard" attitudes from both camps in dire need of ejection from the scene. Click here to read the full News AnalysisLabels: Business Information, enterprise, Factiva, LexisNexis, media, News Analysis
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By John Blossom - posted at 1:25 PM |
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| Monday, April 02, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:13 PM |
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Need to catch up on recent events in the world of content? Try our weekly headline summaries with embedded commentary. Click here to read our latest headline summaryLabels: summaries
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:04 AM |
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| Sunday, April 01, 2007 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:58 PM |
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Leave it to Google to come up with some ideas which make for good April Fool's jokes - but that carry a grain of...something. Google TiSP is a nifty kit that you can use to tune in broadband wireless services from your nearby water closet - yes, your toilet. A send-up of Google's oft-rumored plans for new networks via everything from broadband wireless to electrical utility lines, it is reminiscent of the tongue-in-cheek whiteboard snapshots from the Googleplex circulated now and again online. The other 1 April send-up is Google Paper, a handy service that lets you get crates of email printouts with which to paper your home - complete with "relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica," as well as glossy photo prints for graphics files. As far as environmental consciousness, "Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier." Good fun, of course, but one wonders whether these are altogether just pranks or handy smoke screens for tossing curious people off the scent of related projects a little more connected to the reality-based community. With a highly fragmented U.S. marketplace a Google broadband wireless service would be problematic but that's not to say that Google may not be willing to be a networking pioneer elsewhere in the world. At the same time Google's numerous initiatives to provide advertising in traditional media outlets would not make an ad-supported custom print service in the next few years far-fetched. Take a look at these send-ups to get a good chuckle but keep a keen nose about as the scent of these little jokes begins to wear off a bit. As Google extends its services to include office automation, ecommerce services and, perhaps, its own computer operating system, stranger things could happen. Labels: Google, Technology, Trends
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:26 PM |
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