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Friday Afternoon Pondering: Minonline.com is the source of the chart above that ranks the top performing publications (as measured by the number of pages of advertising) during the past quarter in the business-to-business vertical of marketing. Minonline.com distributed a link to the chart as a teaser for its subscription-based service in which on Monday, I presume, the chart will be interpreted. At the link above, it merely states: “Crain’s Advertising Age shows its strength as the #1 publication on top of the advertising pages list for the 1st quarter. A less likely occupant is ST Media Group’s Signs of the Times with a first-quarter 2008, year-on-year 10% increase in ad pages and a nearly 40% increase for March 2008.”
Note: This is not the Signs of the Times magazine referred to, rather this publication about the sign industry is.
I’m not sure I trust the B2B media pundits to interpret this chart, however. I think it is a job for the guys at the Freakonomics Blog. How can advertising for advertising be so dramatically up in a quarter when advertising is supposed to be down — especially advertising in, of all media,B2B print publications.
I can guess the theories: (A) Media companies are advertising aggressively because they have so much unsold inventory, (B) media companies are launching new properties and thus are buying more ads to promote them, (C) media companies are aggressively pushing the message that advertising in a recession is the mark of a savvy marketer, (D) none of the above, (E) all of the above.
I’m guessing (doing anything else would require actual research and thought on my part) D & E are both correct answers. But again, I think it will take a skeptical economist to figure this out, not some analyst focusing on a narrow band of data related to the number of advertising pages sold.
Earlier this week, Russell Beattie, in announcing he’s pulling the plug on his year-old startup, Mowser, that provides publishers the ability to easily publish light-weight versions of websites for mobile device web browsers, declared, “I think anyone currently developing sites using XHTML-MP markup, no Javascript, geared towards cellular connections and two inch screens are simply wasting their time, and I’m tired of wasting my time.
He went on to say:
“The argument up to now has been simply that there are roughly 3 billion phones out there, and that when these phones get on the Internet, their vast numbers will outweigh PCs and tilt the market towards mobile as the primary web device. The problem is that these billions of users haven’t gotten on the Internet, and they won’t until the experience is better and access to the web is barrier-free - and that means better devices and “full browsers”. Let’s face it, you really aren’t going to spend any real time or effort browsing the web on your mobile phone unless you’re using Opera Mini, or have a smart phone with a decent browser - as any other option is a waste of time, effort and money. Users recognize this, and have made it very clear they won’t be using the “Mobile Web” as a substitute for better browsers, rather they’ll just stay away completely.
Today, Colin Crawford, Interactive EVP of the business-to-business media giant IDG, called Mobile devices the “dawn of a new mass medium,” and declared, “As mobile usage continues to surge, IDG will be at the forefront - guiding users through the choices of hardware, software and services, developing content and services for our mobile audiences and working closely with marketers to find the most appropriate ways to engage with mobile users and to measure the impact of that engagement. It’s going to be a very exciting journey.
He went on to say:
“According to the International Tellecommunications Union there are over 3.3 billion mobile phone subscribers (2.6 billion unique users) - that’s not far off 50% of the world’s population. The mobile industry is already significantly larger than the internet with its 1.3 billion users and it continues to grow rapidly. There were 1.14 billion units shipped in 2007, according to IDC, and that number is expected to increase by 8.7% to 1.24 billion units in 2008.”
I quote. You decide.
Why is there a “vs.” between the names of the two companies in this headline? PaidContent vs. TechCrunch: Two Visions of Blogging’s Future.
Remind me in what way the two companies compete? Advertising? Readers? Their vision? Huh? They don’t even cover the same industries or markets — so in what way do they compete again?
I can think of several business-to-business media companies that PaidContent.org competes with and out-performs, but TechCrunch is not on that list. I can think of several business-to-business media companies that TechCrunch competes with and out-performs, but PaidContent.org is not on that list.
The only quote in the post that makes any sense to me is this one from Rafat:
“If CNet is the only target you can aspire to be, that is selling yourself really short.”
I agree. I think Rafat should be targeting Crain or Reed Business and Michael should be targeting IDG. Those billion-dollar companies can all trace their lineage directly to founders who were the bloggers of their day — men sitting around kitchen tables putting out dinky publications in nascent industries.
 Earlier tonight, I was curious how different business news websites were covering the breaking story of the JPMorgan Chase acquisition of Bear Stearns. As there are now plenty of heavily-staffed business news websites that represent traditional magazine and newspaper companies, I thought it would be interesting to compare how quickly they each jumped on the story on a late Sunday afternoon. I used the Firefox Add-on Screengrab! (thanks, Jon Henshaw) to record the front page of five business news websites and then posted them in a set on Flickr.
What did I discover from my two-minute exercise? Well, at around 8:15 p.m. EST, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both had staff-written breaking stories — indeed, multiple breaking stories. And while Fortune.com and Portfolio.com had Bear Stearns stories in the lead position, they were not about the breaking situation, rather that story was relegated to “headlines” from wire services. Forbes.com didn’t even have a link to a wire story. (My apologies to my friends at BusinessWeek.com for not including them, but, I got distracted by NCAA tourney bids.)
Here are links to each screengrab on Flickr:
WSJ.com - 8:18 p.m. EST
NYTimes.com (business) - 8:18 p.m. EST
Fortune.com - 8:17 p.m. EST
Forbes.com - 8:15 p.m. EST
Portfolio.com - 8:16 p.m. EST
This exercise also reminded me once more of one of the reasons I’m a fan of the reverse-chronological, perma-linked and time-stamped nature of blogging. As Scott Karp noted the other day, other approaches treat online content (and by content, I mean photos, video, articles, maps, etc.) with traditional editorial approaches and story-telling conventions. But by transporting the conventions of print online, traditional media sites provide no way in which to “follow” the timeline of a developing story. At least with print, historians can easily go back later and revive a day-by-day time-line of coverage of an event. Try that with a typical online news site.
There is a TV news archives at Vanderbilt University that has captured the ephemera of broadcast news since the 1960s. Is there such a thing for the Internet? (Later clarification: Is there such an organization that uses such a model of the TV New Archives that attempts to capture the day-by-day changes that occur on major news websites?) I know that the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, in a rather broad-sweeping way, is, it says, “working to prevent ‘born-digital’ materials from disappearing into the past.” However, when historians in the future try to dissect, for example, the 2008 Presidential Election, will the Internet Archives be able to help them?
Perhaps, but I think a more helpful source may be Flickr. For example, look at Patrick Ruffini’s Flickr set of day-by-day candidate websites. Or, click through Dave Winer’s photo-stream and you’ll be able to get a sense of what the campaign pundits were discussing on a daily basis for most of the past three months.
Until I noticed what Dave and Patrick are doing, I never really thought of Flickr as being a personal “Internet Archive.” However, now I do. And thanks to them, I plan to do more “snap-shots sets” on my Flickr account.
Sidenote: The blogosphere is chattering today about “video and Flickr” and how, when it is added as a feature, it won’t be able to compete with the dominant YouTube. Here’s a way it will compete: People like me will use it to archive in collections and sets the video that goes along with the photos already in those sets.
A long-standing complaint of mine with business-to-business media is that too often they focus their coverage on the transactions of business rather than leading readers to a deeper understanding of more critical issues related to their industry. Don’t get me wrong: the transactions of an industry are important news and it is a requirement that a serious B2B media company break those stories — who’s buying whom, who’s got what new account, personnel moves, financial deals. It’s just that too often, those become the primary focus of a medium — and there’s lots more news out there than who’s getting fired or bought.
A long time ago, I claimed that I don’t blog about transactions unless I’m personally involved or I am friends with someone involved or I believe some highly-visible party involved in the transaction deserves what’s happening — good or bad.
I was reminded this morning what my problem with most B2B transaction stories when I saw this story from my friends at Folio: magazine called: Why Randall-Reilly Sold to Investcorp.” Nothing earth-shattering in the story, but it attempts to answer to the question I — and I’m sure at least 2 or 3 others — had yesterday when I saw the news about the sale — the question we always have when we get news that seems to be pulled straight from press release. Going past the press release quotes to attempt to answer the question “Why?” is what good B2B media does.
 I’m taking notes for a later round-up post, but I’m not “live blogging” the Future of Media conference I’m attending. However, Ashkan Karbasfrooshan of WatchMojo.com is live blogging. Obviously, the gang from PaidContent.org are also convering it.
I’ll be posting photos later, also.
Update: Robert Andrews (who I’m sitting next to at the moment) of PaidContent.org, has posted a tid-bit of news regarding IDG President Bob Carrigan’s response to my question about the relaunch of a website using the URL and brand of the now defunct magazine, The Industry Standard: “(In December, the website will be relaunched as a) “very innovative social media platform” that aggregates input from the community in a prediction market thing.”
Next Tuesday I’ll be in New York for the Future of Business Media conference organized by PaidContent.org. (More info here, including the stellar lineup of panelists). At the conference, I’ll be joining PaidContent.org executive editor Staci Kramer in moderating a panel on “Technology Business Media.” The panelists are Neil Ashe, CEO, CNET Networks; Bob Carrigan, President, IDG Communications; Om Malik, founder, GigaOmniMedia; Greg Strakosch, CEO, TechTarget. Feel free to e-mail me any questions you’re dying to ask one of them.
 Today, a Nashville-based company, ConnectiveHealth, launched a professional bookmark organizing and sharing tool for physicians called “PeerClip.” Before leaving for San Francisco and the Health 2.0 conference where it was unveiled, ConnectiveHealth’s CEO (and my Nashvile/B2B publishing friend), Scott McQuigg, dropped by my office to demo PeerClip. As a bookmarking and conversational media junkie, I was immediately impressed with the functionality of the platform. More significantly, I was struck by how PeerClip uses features and approaches familiar to me (as a bookmarking fan) in a business-to-business, academic and professional context. (For an example of what I mean, check out the “Best of PeerClip” feed on the front of the site where the top link is to an article on the effect of homocysteine lowering on mortality and vascular disease in advanced chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease — not exactly the kind of item that bullet ups the Digg chart.)
Those who read this blog may know of my heavy use of bookmark-organizing and sharing services. Back in the early days of web browsing, I used my browser’s “bookmark” feature to store the URLs of web-pages I wanted to revisit. However, even with “folders” and mastering the art of organizing browser bookmarks, it became apparent to me several years ago that having bookmarks organized on the web was a much better approach, as it allows one to “share” with others what you discover. Since early 2005, I’ve used del.icio.us for such bookmark-sharing — on del.icio.us/rexblog, I’ve bookmarked nearly 1,400 articles and blog posts since January, 2005. At del.icio.us/smallbusiness, some others and I have bookmarked 4-5 posts and articles a day since May, 2005, and now have a collection of over 3,000 articles tagged in eight categories.
(For bookmarks I want to organize for personal reference, I use the Google application, Google Notebook. Also, I sync my browser bookmarks with my .Mac account as a backup.)
More recently, services like Stumbleupon.com have become, in essence, bookmark organizing services with a heavy focus on the “social networking” aspects of shared-bookmarks. By “sharing” bookmarks, some community wisdom emerges. While being perhaps the most simplistic form of knowledge-management imaginable, however, the mere act of saving a news=article can be of service to others — and serves as the foundation of such services as Digg.
As I’ve used these services, I’ve begun to wonder if they can also be applied in a professional or enterprise fashion — where the “wisdom” is limited to a “crowd” of individuals sharing the same employer or professional license. PeerClip — and I’m sure there are others in different fields — will answer that question.
Sidenote: It makes sense for such a service as PeerClip to be based in Nashville, the “Silicon Valley” of healthcare management companies. PeerClip’s parent company already provides an array of online services to hospitals and healthcare professionals nationwide.
Technorati Tags: peerclip
 I typically do not blog about media transactions, however I wanted to explain why I believe the purchase of Mediabistro.com by Jupitermedia, as reported in the New York Times is very important to two types of readers of this weblog — tech media types and B2B media types:
1. Mediabistro is a pure-play, online business-to-business media company that was started as a small-business (i.e., not originally conceived as a well-funded venture-backed strategy in the mode of, say, Tech Target). It was started as a forum, a community, a set of conversational media tools and approaches designed to “host participants” rather than “provide content for” readers.
2. Even though “community” was its original content, it makes money the old-fashioned B2B media way: content drives creation of strong brand which is “monetized” through events, services and data. (The early coverage is focusing on job-listings, which I’m sure are profitable, but I’m guessing conferences and events — online and off — are very significant revenue generation engines.) If I need to spell it out more clearly, this is the business model of such business-to-business new-media companies as PaidContent.org, TechCrunch and, even, Chris Pirillo — a walking, talking, 24/7 B2B media man/brand.
3. Mediabistro is a B2B media company that proves one thing that has also been proven by certain business-to-business media companies that started as events, conference or trade-show businesses: You don’t always need a print product to serve as the center of a business-to-business media brand. You don’t need a print product to anchor the community. If you don’t get anything from this post and what I have to say, please note this: Mediabistro.com is a B2B media company where the community is the heart of the brand. The company is successful because they haven’t paid “lip service” to the notion of community — but have viewed their role as being “hosts” of their readers, users, members, subscribers and advertisers. They supplied the venue and reasons for people to get together, but the people are what’s making them a success.
I haven’t read any professional expert analysis of this transaction, so I don’t know how it’s being spun by the pundits. However, from my vantage point as an informed, yet in-the-bleachers-spectator, I think this is a significant “deal” and validation of a lot of people’s vision and hardwork that may look easy from the outside, but is remarkably difficult to achieve.
The content part of B2B media is a snap when compared to the difficulty in achieving that which is collectively termed community.
Later: Okay, after looking over some of the early blog posts and analysis, I’d like to note a couple of things. The valuation of Mediabistro.com is not linked to “site visits” — as some people who are trying to equate it with a content or social-media platform are trying to do. Mediabistro.com is as much about “off line” revenue-generation, as it is jobs-listings…and page-views are probably one of the least significant sources of its revenues. While this is a web-based media company, it is not a “website” that is being valued on its page views. Second, so-what if the business has been actively “for sale” for two years and has been “looked at” by everyone and his or her brother. Every business is “for sale” from the moment it is created — so, she’s been working on selling the company for over a decade. That said, that it only takes two years of selling something to get an eight-figure check is, well, words like miraculous and inspiring spring to mind. I know I’m awed.
The Wired Blog Epicenter has published an internal email from IDG president Bob Carrigan announcing that Harry McCracken has been reinstated as editor-in-chief of PC World. As blogged last week, McCracken resigned recently following a conflict with his publisher, Colin Crawford, who, according to the memo, is “rejoining the IDG management team as executive vice president, online.”
Bonus links: Chad Dickerson is probably speaking for a lot of fans (including alumni) of IDG in expressing a sigh of relief for how this has played out. Another IDG alumni, Matt McAlister echoes the sentiment as does sometime IDG consultant, Paul Conley
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Observation: When you read stuff like this from former employees, you know there’s something special about the organization and the individuals who run it.
Paul Conley updates his efforts to educate publishers on the obviousness of why paid links within editorial text should not be sold under any conditions. Bill Mickey at Folio: helped push the story along by clarifying the punctuation of an industry-group’s ethical guideline that, if parsed one way, could provide some ethical wiggle room for the practice. (The ethics committee responsible for the misplaced comma, quickly convened and clarified that no matter where the comma goes, selling ad links within editorial copy is unethical.)
As I am clearly and historically on record as being against stealthy text-ads inside the edit well, I feel the need to repeatedly clarify where I stand whenever this topic arises. The following are my personal thoughts, so that I can link back to them in the future when this topic arises. These are my thoughts, only — not a suggestion for any codes or guidelines. And there are probably some commas misplaced, also.
1. When in doubt about the ethical appropriateness of doing something, it’s probably unethical.
2. Highly visible disclosure and transparency of relationships, sponsorships and interests provide the audience with the information necessary for them to judge your credibility — and character.
3. Advertising, sponsorship, promotion and public relations are all perfectly ethical when carried out in the light of day. When there is an effort to cloak, confuse, obfuscate or hide who is behind them, they become unethical. For example, I believe that “paid reviews” in which bloggers are required only to bury somewhere in the post that they are sponsored are unethical, because there is a clear effort to confuse the casual reader — and to game search engines — into thinking they are merely another blog post. However, if such posts are clearly marked at the heading level with distinctive copy, something like “Sponsored Post” or “Advertising,” then they become more ethically defensible.
4. I believe it is ethical to use links that take readers to editorial content that is sponsored. The New York Times, for example, provides many links that allow the reader to click to a search of other New York Times articles that contain that word. Those search results pages are, in my opinion, editorial in nature — despite the fact that some of the search results will lead to “paid content” and along with the search results, the page will contain advertising.
5. I believe contextual advertising is very ethical (although sometimes risky) if the ads appear outside the edit well.
6. I believe it is ethical for marketers or others to provide products to reporters or bloggers to review, as long as the arrangement is prominently disclosed and explained to the reader. Here are some fuzzy areas related to this rule where disclosure is the best policy: when you are paid to be on a panel, but are also “covering” an event; clearly, you should disclose it when your expenses are paid by the sponsor or a third-party when attending an event you are covering (i.e., “familiarization tours” or travel expenses) — but I’m not sure if having a “media pass” to a ticketed event requires disclosure. However, since I’m not sure, I will disclose it when I have a “press pass” from here on.
7. Here’s one I’ve changed my mind on over the years. I think links to titles of books and songs can lead to affiliate stores as long as it is disclosed within the post what is taking place. For example, whenever I mention a book title, I usually link to Amazon.com. If I’m getting a commission from any sales of that book, I should disclose it. (For the record, I usually forget to embed my affiliate link and I don’t recall ever actually receiving any commissions from Amazon, but I still try to remember to disclose it when I have such a link.)
8. And finally, not only do I believe it’s ethical, it’s what I do for a living. I believe it is desirable for manufacturers, marketers and any company or group who has an audience to have their own array of online or print or broadcast or sky-writing media platforms to engage in conversations with others — as long as those platforms clearly disclose who’s doing what.
Over the years, except when I or a friend are directly involved, I’ve made it a practice of not blogging about the coming-and-going of magazine people or, for that matter, most of the launching and closing, and buying and selling of magazines. However, as it involves blogs, I’m briefly suspending that practice to note that the well-blogged report that Harry McCracken, editor of PC World was resigning over an ethical dustup with his publisher has been reponded to via blog by Colin Crawford, the publisher.
I point this out also because Colin’s response fell within the Scoble 24-Hour Rule that says on the blogosphere, you have 24 hours to refute something or it becomes “fact.”
Paul Conley shares my belief (or, more correctly, I share his) that text within the body of a news article should not be hyperlinked to advertisements. Paul has long been the leading opponent to this practice among the small group of us who are sometime labeled “magazine bloggers” or “b2b media bloggers.” I am 100% agreement with his complaint. Today, he blogs that Ziff Davis (not currently related to ZDNet) has again started to embed ads in news articles. This may seem like a nuanced and esoteric issue, but it’s not hard to understand if you follow the common sense and ethically enlightened belief that in the context of a news story — the edit well — advertisements and sponsorships should be clearly marked as such. If I’m reading a story and I see a word linked, then my expectation as a reader is that the link goes to something editorial directly related to the word or term highlighted. Likewise, if I see something that is marked “adv.,” then I think it goes to something that is advertising. I am not against advertising (obviously) or advertising online. I’m not even opposed to having clearly marked advertising or sponsored content that is interspersed with editorial content. The practice that Paul (and I) oppose is the hidden nature of hyperlinked-text advertising.
This is a slippery slope. The technology of hyperlinking is racing forward and the editorial and advertising usage of the link will follow the technology. For an example of “the future,” visit any article on the New York Times website and double click on any word, whether it is underlined or not. You will be taken to an “encyclopedia entry” for that word. It’s a very cool feature, but only because the Times is smart enough to tread gently on the feature: there are no ads on the results page except for the “powered by Answers.com” icon. But soon, who knows? I am sure an argument can be made for how a link from one page that is editorial content sponsored by advertising to another page that is editorial content sponsored by advertising fits within the parameters of ethically appropriate practices.
Also, what about a news article that clearly states at the beginning of the article that all links in the article are to ads. Would that make it ethical? In my mind, it would make it about as ethical as a blog post that a marketer purchased through one of the “pay to post” services that require the blogger to disclose somewhere that the post was purchased: in other words, it could be morally defendable, but still slimy. As a reader, I’d unsubscribe from the RSS feed of the blog/website and would, whenever possible, use other sources.
Disclosure and transparency are the best measures of ethics. Advertising and sponsorships are good things. But, how those sponsorships are executed and where and how that advertising appears is what make them appropriate — or not.
Later: After Scott (see comments) noted that a user can turn off the text ads, I clicked over to the site and discovered that, yes, if one knows where to go and how to do it, one can opt out of the hypertext linked ads. Again, that’s an ethical feint — like announcing at the top of the article that links go to ads — that may provide a publisher some room for a fuzzy defense of the practice, but at what cost? Certainly, it’s not worth what it must be to signal to your writers and readers when you do this.
 For many years, I have been saying that Rafat Ali’s PaidContent.org (and the company, ContentNext) will be the first business-to-business media empire that started on a blog. I’ve cheered Rafat and PaidContent.org editor Staci Kramer for doing so many things right. First, they are great journalists. They develop sources. They break stories. They (and now others on their staff) work weekends and nights to have the story first and right. Their readers have grown to depend on them for being the go-to source on the business transactions and trends that fall in the blurring lines between emerging technology and traditional media. But they are also great bloggers as they have long done something that “old media” reporters and editors have been slow (if at all) to figure out: They serve their readers by guiding them to breaking stories wherever they appear.
Second, early on Rafat recognized that serving as the nexus of a then unrecognized business community was the key to building a brand — and a business. A “blog” served as the foundation of that brand in the way that a trade magazine would have served as the heart of such a brand in the past. I’ve had the privilege of being a fan in the bleachers cheering on as the PaidContent.org “brand” grew into what I thought it would be. I’ve attended mixers that ContentNext held in New York and in Northern Virginia. Both were not only well attended — jammed — they were filled with the crowd you’d want to show up if your brand was at the crossroads of the new kind of tech/media fusion “deals” taking place.
Today, in the first “conference” (see photos) organized by Rafat & Co. (including Jimmy Guterman, who helped program the event), the “brand value” of PaidContent.org was clearly on display. A mix of Hollywood and Silicon Valley and New York players were gathered together to dissect the economics of social media. It was the type of gathering where the people in the audience are as knowledgeable as the people on the panel, and everyone knows it. So, the panelists — and moderators — bounced it out to those in the audience if a question arose about a specific topic on which there’s some expertise under-roof that could be called upon. That seems natural for those of us who have participated in “bloggercon unconferences.” However, in a room with 500 people from every tech and media firm you can think of, it was a refreshing experience.
For example, if the topic of a Google acquisition came up, Rafat would call on a person in the audience who he knew was a part of the deal. The role “journalist as moderator” was on display. That happened in nearly ever session. The message was clear: The people who read PaidContent.org are the ones who matter in a fuzzy business category where Yahoo! and HBO and the Wall Street Journal all are doing deals that could potentially overlap.
Bottomline: PaidContent.org and the company ContentNext are heading to some impressive places. They’ve used blogging software and approaches, but their journalism and business model are time-tested and true. Great products. Great community. Content that matters — information and knowledge that is “mission-critical” to the people who depend on it.
I’m glad I knew them when…
Technorati Tags: b2b, blogging, media, paidcontent.org, econsm
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