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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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 2:15 PM
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Trends
ABC Reveals Big Drops in Circ in Spring 2007
Editor & Publisher
Social Networking Leaves Confines of the Computer
The New York Times*
Mixed Media: Big Media Can Survive
Forbes
Panama Not Enough To Battle Google: Yahoo Acquires RightMedia
TechCrunch
News Corp. to bring MySpace to China
IHT via Content Agenda
Joost's Advertising Model
Advertising Lab
Google nudges state governments to make public records more accessible
AP via The York Dispatch
Physician wikis: Do-it-yourself textbooks
Amednews.com
Internet Radio Bill Would Strip Artist Payments
US Newswire via Content Agenda
ABCNews.com Relaunches with Citizen Journalism
Micro Persuasion
The Latest Must-Have for Yuppies: A Blog About the Neighborhood
The New York Times*
Fast Search sides with newspapers in Web sales war
Reuters
So much for the 'new and improved' GPL
CNET News

Best Practices
New Google Natural Search Patent to Penalise Duplicate Content
Direct Traffic.org
PROMO Magazine Study Reports Large Increase in Interactive Marketing Spending
BusinessWire

Cool Tools
PikSpot Is Splashcast Plus Ning
Mashable
Discourse DB brings Semantic Web to politics
Really Simple Sidi
Find Social Network Users with YoName
Mashable
Finally, the On-Demand, Online Garage Band Gets Real
Wired Magazine

Deals, Parnerships & Sales

Reuters Advances Development of Search Capability with the Acquisition of ClearForest
BusinessWire
Pyxis and Morningstar Partner to Make Wholesalers' Lives Easier
Mutual Fund Wire
New York Times Building Is Sold for About $525 Million
WSJ Online*

Products, Markets & People
Brainshark Expands Professional Services Offerings
BusinessWire
Reuters To Launch Algorithmic News Sentiment Tool
Seeking Alpha
Baynote Delivers Profits from 'The Long Tail' with New Community-Guided eCommerce Solution
PR Newswire
Construction Business Media readies debut of 'Architectural SSL'
BtoB Online

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By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM
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Sunday, April 29, 2007
Trends

Dominance 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

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By John Blossom - posted at 10:40 PM
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Friday, April 27, 2007

By John Blossom - posted at 1:41 PM
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
Trends
Tribune Opens Offer For Half of Its Shares
WSJ Online*
Google Passes Microsoft, Yahoo as Most-Visited Site
Bloomberg News
Thomson first-quarter profit jumps 63.5 pct
Reuters via Globe Investor
AllThingsD: Really Live This Time
paidContent.org
Eyevio - Sony Launching YouTube Rival on Friday
Mashable
How the Internet is Reshaping Real Estate
RIS Media
Social Bookmarks: Not for Bloggers Only
ClickZ Networks
Court orders Yahoo China to unlink 229 songs in copyright case decision
South China Morning Post
Simultaneous VOD release bad for DVD sales
Video Business /Content Agenda
Joost gets blue-chip sponsors
IHT
WashingtonWatch Becomes A Wiki
Web Pro News
Wireless Startups Searching for VC Dollars
GigaOM

Best Practices
Responding to Andrew Keen’s Anti-Web 2.0 Manifesto
P2P Foundation
We need open wireless
SmartMobs
iCrossing Study Finds Most Mobile Internet Users Connect to Search
Phone Content.com
Newspapers Debate Online Reader Comments
The New York Times*

Cool Tools
View the voice of the mob
Smart Mobs
Twango: YouTube meets Flickr meets Odeo (sorta)
Download Squad

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
Xinhua Finance Media Deals For Two New Regional Magazines Being Launched By China Telecom
PR Newswire via Sys-Con
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

Products, Markets & People
AOL Launches AOL.in
IT News Online
IAC Advertising Solutions Announces Contextual Advertising Product
PR Newswire

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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.

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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 Up

Social Media Meets Marketing

Social Media Meets Hollywood

Social Media Meets News

Social Media Meets Mobile Media

Social Media Meets Deals

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 11:10 AM
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Trends
The Short Tail of Advertising

Micro Persuasion
Communist Party to ‘purify’ internet
Asia News
Google scary now? Personal Health Records, sponsored by Google, next
ZDNet
In Search of the Perfect Web Page
Slate via Content Agenda
Yapta Will Be Awesome For Heavy Travelers
TechCrunch
A Difficult Annual Times Meeting for Sulzbergers
The New York TImes*
Two Tribune Papers Announce Job Cuts
WSJ Online*
Comedy Central parent Viacom acknowledges it erred in asking YouTube to yank a parody
AP via LA Times

Best Practices
User-Generated Content Delivers More Bang for Your Online Marketing Buck According to Study
MarketWire

Cool Tools
Mindtouch Launches Expanded Wiki Solution
Mashable
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

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
ABM Partners With iCopyright on Anti-Piracy Tagging and Content Licensing Program for Members
MarketWire
Elsevier Selects Rightslink(R) for Online Copyright Permissions
BusinessWire
MindTouch Partners with SignOnSanDiego on Strategic Wiki Initiative
BusinessWire
Yahoo, Gracenote launch lyrics service
Reuters via CNET

Products, Markets & People
Endeca Unveils the Next Generation of the Guided Navigation Experience
BusinessWire via TMCNet
Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Launches Sprig.com
PR Newswire
Salesforce.com Unveils First AppExchange Incubator - Fostering the Future of Entrepreneurship
PR Newswire
Elsevier Extends ScienceDirect ArticleChoice to Academic Institutes Worldwide
PR Newswire

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By John Blossom - posted at 11:00 AM
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Monday, April 23, 2007
Trends
Google rises at Yahoo's expense
CNET News
From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet
The New York Times*
Papers' Web Hopes Dim a Bit
WSJ Online*
Amazon set to launch online music store
Times Online
Google warns of limited innovation in enterprise content management
Computerworld UK
URGENT! Europeans! Last chance to save Europe from worst
copyright law in the world!

BoingBoing
USATODAY.com, Reports Traffic Spike in Registrations
Web Site Host DIrectory
Magazines, Online And Off
Forbes
Wikipedia ponders selling ads
Toronto Star via Content Agenda
More Thoughts On Web 2.0 Expo
Read/Write Web
Microsoft General Counsel on DoubleClick and Antitrust: Why Did DoubleClick Turn Down Microsoft?
John Battelle's Searchblog
Google Courts Broadcasters with YouTube Ads
VNUNet
Philadelphia Journalism’s New Order
The New York Times*

Best Practices
OCLC’s WorldCat Local: A Promising Development for Library Patrons
Information Today
New model for sharing: Free music with ads
NY Times via Content Agenda
The Participation Ladder and Its Impact on Marketing and PR
Micro Persuasion

Cool Tools
AttenTV turns Web surfing into eerie spectator sport
CNET News

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
Silverchair and McGraw-Hill Launch New Online Pharmacy Education Resource for Students
PR Newswire via PR-Inside
ProQuest CSA And MLA Announce Online Reference And Newspaper Deal
Managing Information

Products, Markets & People
Wiley announces the launch of Anatomical Sciences Education
EurekAlert
Promise of Science to search Dutch doctoral theses
Really Simple Sidi

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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.

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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

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By John Blossom - posted at 11:01 PM
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Saturday, April 21, 2007

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 purchasing

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By John Blossom - posted at 3:02 PM
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Trends
Google Displays Core Strength
WSJ Online*
AOL founder launches health care Web site
CNET News
Yahoo sued for providing data on Chinese dissidents
ComputerWorld
MySpace Users Decide What News Is Fit to Print
Tech News World
Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History
Search Engine Land
Copyright deal clears way for European Digital Library
EUobserver.com/ Content Agenda
Dow Jones: Can online revenue replace old media sales?
AOL Blogging Stocks
Times Co., Gannett and Tribune Co. Report Declines
The New York Times*

Best Practices
The Blog is the New Resume
Borkado
Academy Award-winning film released under Creative Commons
BoingBoing
Web 2.0 Tools Inspire Data Sharing Software
PC World

Cool Tools
A new tool from IBM to analyze unstructured text
Really Simple Sidi
Google Product Search
Museum of Modern Betas
Google AJAX Feed API
Programmable Web
LeapTag, RSS by tags
Download Squad

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
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
Hitwise Acquired by Experian
O'Reilly Radar
LexisNexis to Distribute Martindale-Hubbell® Law Digest on Amazon.com(R) via "Print on Demand"
BusinessWire

Products, Markets & People
TheNewsRoom Announces Environmental, Science and Health News for Online Earth Day Coverage
PR Newswire
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

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By John Blossom - posted at 11:56 PM
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Trends
MySpace News Launches Tomorrow
Mashable
Dow Jones profit tops estimates
Reuters via Earth Times
Web 2.0 is all about the money
SF Chronicle via Content Agenda
Google Rains On StumbleUpon Parade: Launches Direct Competitor
TechCrunch
Live Blogging the Expo Day 2 Keynote (Part 1)
O'Reilly Radar
Live Blogging the Expo Day 2 Keynote (Part 2)
O'Reilly Radar
Suddenly, the Web Is Giving Eggheads Something to Watch
WSJ Online*
YouTube to split revenues with users
Variety
Online Classifieds Show Potential As TV, Cable And Radio Encroach On Newspapers’ Territory
paidContent.org
Bereft of BlackBerrys, the Untethered Make Do
The New York Times*
EMI Music revenue shrinks by 15%
The Hollywood Reporter
The RIAA’s Copywrongs
The Cornell Daily Sun
A major difference between Microsoft 1.0 and Microsoft 2.0 (Google)
CenterNetworks
Media mine Web searches for readers
AP via Yahoo! News
Q&A: Jay Rosen and Assignment Zero
USC Annenberg OJR
Clear Channel Is Said to Get Raised Bid
The New York Times*

Best Practices
How Google Blogsearch ranks your Posts… In their own words
ProBlogger
ARF finds slow b-to-b market research adoption, usability
BtoB Online

Cool Tools
Swivel Makes Tasty Data
Mashable
Google Releases Improved Content Removal Tools
Search Engine Journal
Top 5 from Web 2.0 Expo
WebWare
Searching without a query
Google Blog
Mowser Makes Sites Mobile Friendly
Mashable

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
HealthiNation Launches on Joost
BusinessWire
Nature and EMBO launch a new journal blog
Really Simple Sidi

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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.

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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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 12:39 AM
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Trends
Web 2.0 Expo: Media Companies Confront Mortality
Information World
Live Blogging the Web 2.0 Expo Keynote
O'Reilly Radar
Tellme Launches Free 411 Business Search Service
TechCrunch
Google preparing to crack down on paid search links
Ars Technica
Google Achieves Behavioral Targeting Nirvana
TMCNet
Google: The Ad Dominator?
BusinessWeek
Google Continues to Exploit Antitrust Laws to Dominate Internet Advertising: NETCompetition.org
PR Newswire
Microsoft attacks Google-DoubleClick merger as anti-competitive
DPA via Content Agenda
Ad Sector Eyeballed for Acquisitions
New York Post
Nielsen Co. Reports Decline in 2006 Operating Income
FOLIO: Magazine
Radio Must "Reframe and Rebrand"
Radio Ink
Local and National Papers Break News on Massacre - In Blogs
Editor & Publisher
Yahoo Strikes Ad Deal With More Papers
The New York Times*
YouTube filtering system almost ready
Download Squad

Best Practices
Maybe a Lavender Web Site Wasn’t How to Attract Women
The New York Times*
Offline or Online, Civility Depends on Each Community’s Tolerance
MediaShift
Open Letter: A Lesson Learned Twittering
Micro Persuasion

Cool Tools
Attensa Feed Server Integrates Publishing, Search & Discovery Tools for Enterprise Web Feed Workflows
eMediaWire
Netvibes users to create their own Universes
CNET News

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
Chockstone Acquires Peppercoin, Strengthens Its Position in Real-Time Loyalty Marketing Programs
Chockstone
Generate Launches Media Solutions for Publishers & Content Providers
PR Newswire
blinkx to Power Multimedia Content for Portfolio.com
PR Newswire via Sys-Con
LexisNexis Teams with Elsevier to Offer Exclusive Scientific, Technical Journals
BusinessWire
CCH and Proxix Enter Sales and Use Tax Information, Solutions Partnership Agreement
PR Newswire

Products, Markets & People
S&P Adds Tools for Understanding Markets, Developing Portfolios to Investor Newsletter
PR Newswire

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By John Blossom - posted at 2:59 PM
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Monday, April 16, 2007

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 Trust

Scott Moore, Yahoo! Media Group

Using Mashups to Deliver Business Information

"Undiscovered Genius" Ezra Ernst, CEO Swets North America

What Does Integration Mean to your Customers?

Publishing 2.0 Models - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Publisher Strategies

Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Second Life

Michael Schoen, LookSmart, Ltd.

Top Line - Who Pays for Content, Why and How?

SEO - Yours, Mine or Ours?

Vendor-Buyer Technology Showcase

CEO Panel

End-Note Address from Janice Lachance, CEO of SLA

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By John Blossom - posted at 9:57 AM
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Sunday, April 15, 2007
Trends

If 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:


By John Blossom - posted at 7:44 PM
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Friday, April 13, 2007

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.

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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.

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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...

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By John Blossom - posted at 10:36 PM
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Trends
Google backs character-recognition research
CNET News
Google Targets Voice Searches
WSJ Online*
Google aims to usurp campus email systems
ZDNet
Google Continues Search Engine Dominance - Even In Verticals!
Read/Write Web
Google’s next advertising deal, DirecTV
Venture Beat
Wikipedia a force for good? Nonsense, says a co-founder
Times Online
McGraw-Hill: Growth Strategy Solidly in Place
Seeking Alpha
Publishing CEOs blogmenting on the future of reference
books

Really Simple Sidi
Hyper-Local Citizen Media Sites Learn How to Serve Small
Communities

MediaShift
NBCU Signs Download-To-Own Deal With Germany’s T-Com
paidContent.org
IBM hopes its social-networking software for the workplace will spur revenue and slow Google
Boston Globe/ Content Agenda
Copyright charges against Beijing darken mood for upcoming dialogue
Straits Times via Content
Agenda
B-to-B Media Events' Revenue Surpasses Print
FOLIO: Magazine

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

Cool Tools
FeedBlitz enabling to subscribe to blogs with Twitter
Library Clips
Twitter as a business meeting or collaboration tool?
CoWorking
Free Barcode Creation Software
Download Squad
New APIs: Book Publishing and Gov Search
Programmable Web

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
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

Products, Markets & People
Wetpaint adds private messaging to Wiki service
WebWare
TheStreet.com Adds Bank, Thrift, Insurer and HMO Financial Ratings to Free Proprietary Screening Tool
BusinessWire

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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...

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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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 12:15 AM
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Monday, April 09, 2007

By John Blossom - posted at 11:54 PM
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Sunday, April 08, 2007

By John Blossom - posted at 11:21 PM
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Friday, April 06, 2007
Trends
Blogosphere alive with the sound of musings — 70 million of them
Times Online
Open Access and the Progress of Science
American Scientist
Moving Out of the Shadows: Publishing From the Rest of the World
ScienceCareers
New Media Revolution Winners And Losers
Forbes
Newspapers' Online Classified Nets Drive Traffic
Media Daily News
Technorati’s transitions to the Live Web and taggers
ZDNet
A Lose-Control Approach to Hyper-Local News
Editor & Publisher
McClatchy's deal with Yahoo opens doors
AP via Yahoo! News
Study says copyrighted material not dominant on YouTube
Broadcasting & Cable
Dangdang.com Accused Of Content Infringement
China Tech News
Microsoft to offer DRM-free songs for Zune?
Download Squad
Homes, not just homepages
Google Blog
Online Experiment for Print Magazine
The New York Times*
The subway tunnel as video billboard
CNET News

Best Practices
White Papers Most Important to Technology Buyers
MediaPost
Wealthy Consumers Embrace Online Collaboration and Community but on Their Own Terms
MarketWire via Sys-Con

Cool Tools
SharedBook API - Let Your Users Print their own Books
Mashable
If You Don’t Use Del.icio.us, You Will Now
TechCrunch
Autonomy's Virage Automates Copyright Infringement Detection for Online Video
Insurance NewsNet
Google Turns Maps Into a Community
Micro Persuasion

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
Dice.com Parent Files For $100 Million IPO
paidContent.org
DMGI to Offer Video Content Through Amazon Unbox
PR Newswire via Sys-Con
LexisNexis(R) Applied Discovery(R) Earns ISO 9001:2000 Certification for Quality Management
BusinessWire

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By John Blossom - posted at 12:32 AM
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Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Trends
Web vs. Print: Online Successes at One Newspaper Raise More Questions Than They Answer
Knowledge@ Wharton
Microsoft sees DRM-free music in Zune's future
CNET News
Print death watch
Really Strategies Blog
BitTorrent launches ad-supported downloads
Content Agenda
Podcasts Attract Growing Audiences, But Not Ad Revenue
paidContent.org
EU Lodges Complaint Against Apple's iTunes; Alleges Restrictive Practices; Record labels named
IBD via Content Agenda
Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why!
GigaOM
Forget YouTube: Go To These Sites If You Want Hard Core Copyright Infringing Content
TechCrunch
Ask.Com's 'Revolt' Risks Costly Clicks
WSJ Online*

Best Practices
Google vs. Microsoft: Do you want Google to be your 'librarian'?
ZDNet Blogs
When It Comes To Video, Do Consumers Want To Search Or Discover?
Search Insider

Cool Tools
Bye-Bye PDF: The New Coming e-Book Revolution - An Interview With Antonio Tombolini
Robin Good
Yahoo! Alpha - Google Custom Search Engine Gets a Competitor
Digital Inspiration
Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox: Bad News For Flock
TechCrunch
Read stories on your mobile device with Wattpad
Download Squad

Deals, Parnerships & Sales
PR Newswire to Provide Enhanced News Content to Bizjournals.com
PR Newswire via Broadcast Newsroom
Interactive Data to Acquire Xcitek Market Data
BusinessWire
Nstein Technologies announces departure of Chairman and CEO
CNW Group
Meredith Corporation Signs Distribution Agreement with ClipSyndicate
PR Newswire via Sys-Con

Products, Markets & People
TheNewsRoom Now Has Thousands of Videos, Articles and Feeds on Cancer News and Information
PR Newswire via Sys-Con
Patent Analysis Tool uses information retrieval techniques
ThomasNet

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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.

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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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 12:29 AM
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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

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 Analysis

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By John Blossom - posted at 1:25 PM
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  1 comments (click to view or to add your own) 
 
Monday, April 02, 2007

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 summary

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By John Blossom - posted at 11:04 AM
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Sunday, April 01, 2007

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.

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By John Blossom - posted at 9:26 PM
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