Subscribe to our XML feed
(?) or add to:
MyYahoo
Bloglines
Rojo
NewsGator Online
CNET Newsburst
|
| 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 2:15 PM |
permanent link to this entry
 bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
| 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 10:40 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
| Friday, April 27, 2007 |
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
| Thursday, April 26, 2007 |
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 6:48 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 4:14 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
4 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 10:37 AM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 12:10 AM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
| 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 7:53 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
2 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 7:44 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
| 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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 3:26 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
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
|
|
By John Blossom - posted at 12:48 PM |
|
permanent link to this entry
bookmark this entry:
|
|
|
|
0 comments (click to view or to add your own)
|
 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 |
