|
LATEST
NEWS ANALYSIS |
|
Date/Headlines/Author |
Summary |
|
|
| 30 May 2007 |
|
|
The Quality Gap: The Race for Context
Pushes Content Quality to the Sidelines |
|
|
|
"Quality is as quality does" may not be a saying that came
out of Forrest Gump's mouth but it's a simple formula that
seems to be proving itself on the Web as traditional
sources of quality content lose audience share to search
engines and social media sites. At the same time, though,
the ever-increasing popularity of social media sites does
not always seem to be balanced by mature quality control.
But don't mistake immature techniques with inadequate
potential: the techniques used to generate social media are
carving out a new path to content quality that's here to
stay. |
|
|
|
| 14 May 2007 |
|
|
Then There Were Two: Thomson and
Reuters Plan a Power Play for Business Information |
|
|
|
As Thomson prepares to subsume the assets of Reuters many
eyes are on the impact to financial content markets from
this historic merger. But with Reuters CEO Tom Glocer
expected to take the overall helm at Thomson the more
important impact might come from the lessons that Glocer is
prepared to apply to Thomson's other divisions. With
decades of experience in both real-time and media markets
Glocer may have the opportunity to transform Thomson into a
far more agile player in global markets for business
information. |
|
|
|
| 7 May 2007 |
|
|
Tiny
Bubbles: Social Media Explodes in a Thousand Small New Ways |
|
|
|
Social media is booming, but is all of the activity
surrounding its growth a precursor to a dot-com-like bubble
burst? While in some ways investors may overextend
themselves on the social media trend as much as any other
social media is growing to become a trend that is based on
countless tiny bubbles rather than the huge risk-takers
that we're used to seeing in the media limelight. At is
core social media is about human communications returning
to normal levels of discourse that may have been forgotten
in the push to cash in on electronic content - and that
will require more sophisticated monetization models than
those being pursued by most media companies. |
|
|
|
| 3 April 2007 |
|
|
The New Old Guard: Battling for the
Future of Business Information |
|
|
|
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. |
|
|
|
| 25 March 2007 |
|
|
Business Information 3.0: Building
Quality Business Content from the Web |
|
|
|
Companies such as Zoominfo and Generate are using
born-on-the-Web content and technologies to create business
information services that are several notches above
previous efforts to glean quality information from Web
sites and other key sources. With an emphasis on analytics
and semantic processing and business plans that are
targeted towards the meat of traditional business
information markets you could say that Business Information
3.0 has been born. Are traditional vendors ready to take on
these well-funded BI 3.0 challengers? |
|
|
|
| 1 March 2007 |
|
|
Amongst Peers:
Experts Enter Social Media Communities to Build Contacts
through Content |
|
|
|
While social media has become the hot trend in publishing
many of the properties generating social media content are
not attracting headline experts into their frays.
Gather.com is addressing this by seeding leading figures
from book publishing, music, heath and finance to post
content and field comments on a peer basis with other
Gather members. Getting experts to act as community members
should not be too unfamiliar to publishers already used to
organizing conferences but using experts effectively in
social media outlets may require them to lay aside some
preconceived notions about how experts support their
publishing requirements. |
|
|
|
| 15 February 2007 |
|
|
Google Print:
Printers Move to Build Google-Like Scale for Custom
Publishing |
|
|
|
As in publishing the printing business has been undergoing
quite a bit of consolidation and scaling lately, creating
ever-larger printing conglomerates focused on higher
margins and revenues. The key to their improved economic
performance will be "short run" printing for customers
wanting to reach highly targeted markets with customized
messaging. What will happen when the economies of mass
customized printing are married with the source-agnostic
aggregation of today's Web? Call it Google Print - and call
it the next major challenge facing today's publishers. |
|
|
|
| 27 January 2007 |
|
|
Promises,
Promises: eBooks Still Await Serious Commitments from Major
Publishers |
|
|
|
The buzz this week is about Google's plans to offer eBook
downloads for PCs and mobile devices. Great news, but will
this allow the book industry to wrestle out of the
stranglehold of a mass of conflicting delivery technologies
and DRM strategies? That's not likely any time soon -
especially given the tentative relationship between Google
and wary book publishers. Yet the future of book publishing
is hanging on the willingness of publishers to move
aggressively into an environment that will allow eBooks to
move into the contexts in which users value them most. Are
book publishers ready to move past promises of eBook
development to aggressive new strategies? |
|
|
|
| 15 January 2007 |
|
|
The Real-Time Web: Content at the
Speed of Today's Online Publishers |
|
|
|
News that the New York Stock Exchange may cut a deal to
bring real-time trading information to Google Finance is
bound to cause quite a stir, but the fact of the matter is
that NYSE and other sources of real-time information are
late to the Web game. While Wall Street huddled down and
focused on ensuring sub-millisecond delays in trade tickers
the rest of the world was out building news and other
business-ready content on the Web that's in real-time feeds
as soon as it's posted online. New services are sprouting
up to take advantage of this phenomenon, a trend that's
likely to shape many enterprise-ready information services. |
|
|
|
| 2 January 2007 |
|
|
Outlook 2007
Preview: Reality Checks for New and Old Forms of Publishing |
|
|
|
With the confetti from New Year's celebrations barely in
the dumpster the hangover from a heady 2006 weighs heavily
on the minds of many content services providers. The pace
of change for content producers in 2007 doesn't promise to
slow down a whit - and in fact is likely to gain steam as a
stalling economy promises to push slow-to-change publishers
off the stage altogether and to accelerate the shift to
electronic revenues. Our preview of our full-blown Outlook
2007 focuses on six key "A"s for the new year: Audience,
Aggregation, APIs, Alternatives, Acceleration and Asia. |
|
|
|
| 22 December 2006 |
|
|
The New You:
The Next Generation of Social Media Moves Towards Focused
Products |
|
|
|
In the midst of the social media revolution it's easy
to think that the war for profitable publishing will
continue to be fought on the grand scale of major portals
like MySpace and YouTube. Although major social media
properties are certainly important factors in this movement
the trend is already moving away from the gargantuan
victors to more focused media properties. Pick your niche
for which you think social media will succeed, listen to
the audience in that sector - and then throw out the
assumptions and limitations built into Wikis, weblogs and
other social media platforms. Tomorrow's successful social
media properties will move far beyond these simple tools to
solutions that satisfy audiences in far more sophisticated
ways. |
|
|
|
| 14 December 2006 |
|
|
The Death of Media:
Are Direct Online Marketing Channels Superseding
Publishers? |
|
|
|
Corporate Web sites may not push out awesome viewership
statistics compared to many media sites, but the data
coming out of recent research is pointing to direct
communications with online audiences providing multiples
more impact on their bottom lines than media-based
advertising. Online media companies are likely to have a
great year in 2007 but the looming question is how much
longer marketers are going to care about Web site
advertising in an era when direct conversations between
sellers and buyers are pushing traditional media to the
sidelines. The media isn't dead yet, but if it can't
shoehorn its way into these conversations more effectively
it better start thinking about it's retirement plan. |
|
|
|
| 6 December 2006 |
|
|
Feed on This:
Publishers Face the Dilemma of Content in Motion |
|
|
|
XML-based datafeeds are becoming popular tools for
delivering content to online audiences from Web sites. But
feeds are far from popular with publishers intent on
boosting page view statistics and fearing leakage through
content that's delivered to users who will never come in to
their sites. The real issue is not feeds but the need for
publishers to accept that an important portion of their
revenues will rely on understanding how to make money from
content delivered to their audience's personal devices and
Web sites. Some leaders are already making good money on
feeds: what will it take for others to follow suit? |
|
|
|
| 27 November 2006 |
|
|
Think Big, Think
Small: The Conflict
Between Media Centralization and Decentralization |
|
|
|
As major media consolidation deals bring more and more
publishing houses into private hands, the challenges of
converting these properties that can respond to the needs
of niche markets are becoming more acute. Combining
infrastructure and staffs cannot be the only factor leading
to more success in publishing markets that are by their
nature highly decentralized. There is a gap in management
skills, industry outlook and strategic vision in publishing
companies that is going to be hard to fill without
confronting the waves of users who are eager to create
their own decentralized media markets. |
|
|
|
| 21 November 2006 |
|
|
Conflicting
Visions: Yahoo Aims to be Master of All Media, Google the
Servant |
|
|
|
Yahoo has been faulted for being slow on the draw in its
deal-making efforts as of late, but with its deal with 176
major newspapers and a separate deal to provide
user-generated content to Answers.com Yahoo is seeking to
place its content and its ads in a broader array of
destinations to make the bottom line look as good as the
top line. In the meantime the global contextualization
engine that is Google keeps chugging along with far better
margins. Is it better to serve in the heaven of user-driven
context than to rule in the hell of decaying media empires? |
|
|
|
| 14 November 2006 |
|
|
Yet Another
Meme: The Web 3.0 Label Highlights Self-Organizing Content |
|
|
|
Already tired from a year's worth of Web 2.0 buzz John
Markoff of The New York Times is spinning out Yet Another
Meme - a "yam" known as Web 3.0. In Markoff's eyes the new
game in content is to push out concierge-like services that
analyze Web content to discern much deeper patterns of
meaning and more intuitive results for answer-seekers. It's
all pretty true stuff, but it's also stuff that's been
under development for a long, long time - and is not likely
to provide quick payoffs any time soon. In the meantime
publishing-empowered users are organizing content
themselves and coming up with some pretty compelling
insights of their own. |
|
|
|
| 7 November 2006 |
|
|
Insight Out:
Hoover's Connect Uses Social Media to Build Networks from
Trusted Sources |
|
|
|
Social networking services for people in professional roles
are booming, but business information providers have made
relatively scant use of them to boost the value of their
own services. But with the debut of the new Hoover's
Connect service business information browsers can benefit
from their social network being right at their fingertips
when they're sizing up potential opportunities in the
Hoover's database. It's an interesting twist on workflow
integration that puts the power of business information
alongside personal contact information in a trusted
environment without a lot of CRM gibberish to get in the
way. This is a powerful combination to watch - and to
emulate. |
|
|
|
| 30 October 2006 |
|
|
Zibb Jab:
Business Search Engines Take on Google and Enterprise
Aggregators |
|
|
|
There's a lot of talk about coming up with better business
search engines lately, but so far the results offered by
most publishers have been evolutionary rather than
revolutionary. Reed Business Information has upped the ante
substantially with its new Zibb search portal that covers a
wide swath of content from both business media sources as
well as from weblogs, Web sites and its own product and
company databases. This blend of business-tuned content
comes wrapped in a thoroughly up-to-date platform promises
to give both Web search engines and enterprise subscription
news databases a strong run for their money. |
|
|
|
| 23 October 2006 |
|
|
Get a Life: Second Life Points the Way
Towards Content Growth in Real-World Communities |
|
|
|
The growth of game-like online communities is accelerating
as virtual worlds like Second Life offer its members
complete virtual lifestyles - including the ability to
spend real-world dollars on both virtual and real goods and
services. The smell of real money is drawing strong
interest from advertisers and media companies intent on not
missing the next hot online trend. But the real lesson of
Second Life has a lot to do with the sorely neglected real
world where publishers need to step up efforts to invent
compelling new products that relate to digital natives. |
|
|
|
| 18 October 2006 |
|
|
Gold Rush: B2B Database and Media
Companies Eye the Same Veins for Growth |
|
|
|
As database publishers and media companies converge on the
common ground of today's business information markets
they're discovering that they both need to learn the same
lessons from different angles. At this year's InfoCommerce
conference database publishers demonstrated how they were
building more powerful value-add services that are
embracing editorial assets while media companies pushed
further into data assets that enhance core editorial
operations. At the intersection of these two efforts is a
gold mine of opportunities in enterprise, media and
personal content markets. |
|
|
|
| 9 October 2006 |
|
|
Social
Bookmarking: Today's Libraries Adjust to Shifting
Generations of Patrons |
|
|
|
Even in towns with vibrant pubic library systems the
strains of the gap between print-centric elderly patrons
and a born-on-the-Web generation are looming large. Elderly
populations are growing while the young are moving away
from libraries as centers for ideas and social learning
activities. With a heavy presence at the polls senior
citizens will be making sure that libraries remain
important local resources. But will they be willing to let
libraries move on to serve the new generation on whom their
future depends? |
|
|
|
| 2 October 2006 |
|
|
Put ACAP on It: Publishers Turn to DRM
to Manage Web Search Engine Access |
|
|
|
In the wake of a Belgian court's slap against Google's use
of copyrighted news European publishers are pondering ways
to fight off search engines becoming content destinations
in their own right. The World Association of Newspapers is
pushing a new system called ACAP to further this fight by
requiring search engines to respect their often convoluted
licensing schemes automatically. Well, it's about time that
they tried this - well, actually it's a couple of years
late at least. And therein lies the problem with making
ACAP really stick as a solution that will make a commercial
difference to mainstream publishers. |
|
|
|
| 25 September 2006 |
|
|
Micro-Context: Moving Beyond Search Engines to
Content-Enabled Publishing Services |
|
|
|
While many publishers focus on search engines to get their
content in the most valuable context possible that's not
where issues of context begin and end for online content. A
new generation of micro-context services are bringing
valuable content sources down to the level of words and
phrases in destination content. These new and evolving
services enable publishers to expose their own content and
content from high-quality content partners to give
audiences a high-value experience whenever they decide to
shift their focus. Think of every bit of content in your
services as the potential starting point for an enhanced
relationship that can keep audiences coming back for more. |
|
|
|
| 18 September 2006 |
|
|
Publishing Express: The Impact of Publishers Acknowledging
Online Dominance |
|
|
|
The time for puffery and posturing about print's power and
supplemental online revenues is officially past for many
publishing companies, yet many of those same companies have
failed to assemble a coherent strategy that will take them
forward into an era of online-dominant revenue models. The
latest market statistics point to an environment that will
not favor those who have not prepared to make that
transition. Getting content into context, going toe to toe
with private investors and building management that thinks
like digital natives are the keys to jumping on a train
just about out of the station. |
|
|
|
| 11 September 2006 |
|
|
Office 2.0:
Publishers Confront A Long Twilight of Personal Computers
in the Enterprise |
|
|
|
The Microsoft Windows-based PC has been a staple of
enterprise offices for more than twenty years, a technology
that has created a stable environment for publishers to
develop value-add services. But with the arrival of new
office technologies that rely on open Web-oriented
standards the broad assumption of having Windows as the
foundation for those value-add revenues is being
challenged. Office 2.0 is a nascent movement with plenty of
rough edges, but tomorrow's winners will be those
publishers who are embracing and shaping the services
available in the Office 2.0 environment today. |
|
|
|
| 5 September 2006 |
|
|
Keeping
it Simple: Content Producers Mix and Match Confusing
Revenue Schemes |
|
|
|
With a plethora of new services and access models the music
industry is the poster child for publishers gone wild
trying to adapt to changing content distribution patterns.
Experimentation can be great, but many publishers are
poking and prodding spreadsheets rather than users to
understand what's going to result in highly profitable
content services. Publishers need to focus on keeping their
purchasing and access options simple and to do so in an
environment in which users are empowered as distribution
agents as well as suppliers of valued content. |
|
|
|
| 28 August 2006 |
|
|
$100 Million
Locomotive: GE's Calhoun Couples Up with VNU to Haul B2B
Media's Future |
|
|
|
VNU's new ownership has moved to put in an aggressive
management team focused on transforming the Dutch
publishing giant into a high-efficiency engine of profits.
At the head one now finds David Calhoun, spirited away from
General Electric's Industrial division. A locomotive man at
the head of this train is probably not a bad idea given the
strength and vision that's required to lift leading B2B
media companies into higher levels of performance. With
Michael Marchesano and Robert Krakoff pulling their portion
of the freight VNU has assembled a powerful team that will
have a lot to prove and much to transform in the months
ahead. |
|
|
|
| 21 August 2006 |
|
|
12x Train Departing: B2B Media M&A Deals
are Helping the Strong Become Stronger |
|
|
|
It's still a hot market for mergers and acquisitions in
publishing today, especially for companies that have picked
out profitable niches and built strong relationships with
their audiences. But it's clear that the deals of 2005 are
not the deals of 2006. Where last year portfolios were
being trimmed and fattened left and right this year is
seeing aggressive multiples rewarded only to those
companies that have defined diverse paths to profits that
will fit in with increasingly sophisticated and demanding
audiences. Getting 12x cash flow is not unheard of these
days, but be prepared to be examined carefully for how your
products and services deliver on many levels. |
|
|
|
| 14 August 2006 |
|
|
WikiEverything: Community-Edited Publications Ponder Paths
to More Legitimacy |
|
|
|
The recent Wikimania conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts
fell on the heels of comedian Stephen Colbert's revealing
how easy it is to twist Wikipedia content to one's own
liking. In spite of Wikipedia's editors correcting his
gibberish quickly and effectively, the question of how to
get Wiki content to be both democratic and authoritative is
not being addressed very effectively yet by Wiki
proponents. The enormous potential for collaborative
content will go largely unrealized until more effective
systems are put in place that recognize how hard it is to
defend a democratic publishing institutions from the
tyrannies of both the mobs and the authorities. |
|
|
|
| 8 August 2006 |
|
|
Book Club: Book
Publishers Seek Out Fresh Inroads to Online-Driven Markets |
|
|
|
Book publishers are working hard to improve their online
marketing channels for their titles, but ironically they
receive the least help in many instances from the authors
of those books. Most book author Web sites are weak
marketing tools that are designed to do little to help
build a reading community or book sales. Compare this with
webloggers such as David Meerman Scott, who has leveraged
his personal weblog into a marketing vehicle for an e-book
- and now for a print title from Wiley. Book publishers
need to consider how to make money on marketing capable
authors as they develop their skills in an online
environment rather than limiting revenues to those
harvested for print. |
|
|
|
| 31 July 2006 |
|
|
News
Hounds: The Scent of News Has Gone Elsewhere While
Publishers Play Catch-Up |
|
|
|
A flurry of "innovations" are making their way into major
newspapers lately: links to competitive sources, weblogs
and user comments are a few of the developments trying to
stir things up. Yet why is it that these new features seem
so...old? As new data from Pew Research shows news
audiences old and young are no strangers to other sources
of news online and are migrating to them at the expense of
traditional news outlets. News organizations have to
retrain their noses and get pack to picking up the real
scent of news that their audiences seek. |
|
|
|
| 24 July 2006 |
|
|
Content
Nation: A World of Personal Publishers Declares Their
Influential Citizenship |
|
|
|
A recent poll by the Pew Internet & American Life Project
reveals that most of the people in the U.S. who are
publishing weblogs are interested in a creative outlet for
communicating with friends and family. But a significant
percentage of survey respondents see influencing others as
a prime motivator in publishing weblogs. If you scale up
the survey data for weblog influence-seekers to its likely
global proportions you wind up with the 65th largest nation
in the world getting the attention of the third largest
nation in the world. This Content Nation is shaping the
world's communications far faster and deeper than even the
most sanguine enthusiasts for personal publishing can
imagine - and they've only just begun. |
|
|
|
| 17 July 2006 |
|
|
Consultative
Sell: Factiva SalesWorks Hooks into Work Solutions via
Channel Partners |
|
|
|
Another day, another content integration product for
enterprises that need subscription content in valuable work
contexts. But as products such as Factiva's SalesWorks(TM)
rely increasingly on technology-oriented channel partners
to penetrate their markets the shift into consultative
selling becomes more problematic. It's great to have your
content in highly valuable contexts, but if your bread and
butter is knowing your clients' needs then you need to
tread carefully with tech-oriented channel partners who can
wind up learning a lot more than you about your markets. |
|
|
|
| 10 July 2006 |
|
|
Game Zone:
Corporations Create Immersive Content to Build Brand
Relationships |
|
|
|
We've been seeing multimedia content posted on corporate
Web sites for years but few of these have the curb appeal
and careful focus of Boeing's sites for its next-generation
airliners. With seductive music and well-crafted
interactive features, Boeing has created an experience that
is more like a video gamer's alternate world than an online
slide show. In doing so the bar has been raised for both
corporations and publishers to consider how the Web can
provide direct and immersive experiences that can sway
opinion makers with both facts and feelings. |
|
|
|
| 3 July 2006 |
|
|
Early
Edition: Webloggers Steal the Real-Time Thunder of News
Headlines |
|
|
|
Where to people go to get today's headlines online? For
| |
