The Important Part: Despite the fact most people have only been using e-mail for the past 15 years, it has become a dominant channel of business communication — and definitely the most mis-used. A couple of interesting thoughts on e-mail have hit my radar in the past 24 hours. First, this check-list from Seth Godin with some practical (and humorous) considerations you should take before hitting that send button. Second, (via a Twitter ‘tweet’ from Steve Rubel) I saw these blog posts by Luis Suarez, a knowledge management expert at IBM, who is 14 weeks into an experiment of giving up business e-mail.
The Take Away: E-mail is not going away anytime soon, but the people who used e-mail before you ever heard of it are moving onto other methods of staying in touch with one-another. Some of this is generational - Facebook and text-messaging trump e-mail for those under 24. Some of this is frustration(al?) - an effort to reduce the noise-level that has resulted from spam and the ease some people have with hitting the send button. Your not going to moving on from e-mail anytime soon, but the next few years will see a significant evolution in how you use and manage e-mail.
The Important Part: In the current issue of BusinessWeek (and online), Heather Green and Stephen Baker have written a great overview of where “social media” (not just blogs, but all the conversational media and social networking tools and platforms out there) are today as it relates to business. Not, as over-reported in the technology blogosphere, about the business of social media. And not about the tools and features and investment opportunities and anything else gee-whiz that’s going on. This BusinessWeek story is about how all these activities and connections and conversations that are taking place online are changing the way business is conducted.
The Take-Away: The article may not be eye-opening to a crowd who spends all day reading tech-blogs and camping-out on Twitter, but it’s a great article to forward to a “C-Level” person at your company or organization who you think could benefit from a high level view of what is transpiring — from a “media brand” they know.
The Less Important Rambling: Over the past three years, I’ve gotten to know BusinessWeek writers (and bloggers) Stephen Baker and Heather Green pretty well. I haven’t actually met them face-to-face, but we’ve shared conversations about Heather’s wedding, Stephen’s book and a myriad of other “important” and trivial matters. We’re “friends” on all those online networking things you’ve ever heard of (and many you probably haven’t if you’re not a Web 2.0 wonk). Because of that, it may seem weird, but I actually know more about what Stephen and Heather are up to than many acquaintances — and friends — I know “off line.”
For example, because we follow each other via Twitter and Facebook, I knew they recently worked on updating a story from May, 2005 with information and insight that has emerged during the past three years. In that second link, they’ve literally annotated the first article with contemporary statistics and knowledge. That’s a brilliantly creative reporting technique that I’ve never seen before as it uses visual cues from the Word document “change tracking” feature so readers can easily see where the new information has been inserted.
If it weren’t Saturday morning of a three-day weekend, I might be tempted to keep rambling, but I have much less important things that are beckoning me at the moment.
If you want to be out in front of the next Chris Anderson book every marketing consultant — and worse, your boss — will be quoting in a few months, go ahead and read this Wired magazine article from the March issue that was posted this morning: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business. Those of us who read Chris’s Long Tail blog have been following along the book’s (and article’s) development (at least mentions of it) for quite a while, but this article is the first step in its public roll-out. And it’s a clever one.
For example, if you are one of the first 10,000 who sign up, Wired will send you a copy of its March issuefor free. And not as a part of a subscription offer (but you’ll be trading them you e-mail address for it). In one of those weird magazine things, however, it will probably be April before you receive the copy of the magazine, according to the fine print.
And then, there is the How to Make Money Around Free Content wiki entry on Wired’s How-to Wiki that features a Hugh MacLeod cartoon and a Fred Wilson headline quote (what, no Robert Scoble?)
The topic may seem a bit dated for those among us who are online community, marketing and media obsessed — those who, for example, check in with Seth Godin on an hourly basis. Seth has provided us (beautifully) for years with the parable version of the value of free phenomena. Seth is the Mother Goose of marketing gurus — he explains things in ways even a marketing director can grasp them. And on the other end of the spectrum, a few brilliant academics have explored in deep, scholarly ways, other avenues in the village of the Economics of Free: for example, anything written by Yochai Benkler.
However, I predict that Anderson’s article — and subsequent book — will get the topic out of the marketing department and academia into the hands of finance and executive types. I’m hoping the book will — like The Long Tail — get into the hands of people who can not only get it, but do something about it.
Quote:
“But free is not quite as simple — or as stupid — as it sounds. Just because products are free doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere, isn’t making huge gobs of money. Google is the prime example of this. The monetary benefits of craigslist are enormous as well, but they’re distributed among its tens of thousands of users rather than funneled straight to Craig Newmark Inc. To follow the money, you have to shift from a basic view of a market as a matching of two parties — buyers and sellers — to a broader sense of an ecosystem with many parties, only some of which exchange cash.”
No matter, you have several months before you have to read the book. (I’m sure there will be a free downloadable version.) And even a few more months after that before its title becomes a square on buzzword bingo cards. In the meantime, I suggest you read the free article and write down some notes on a 3X5 card.
After adding a del.icio.us link to this discussion on Dave Winer’s weblog regarding Twitter’s business model, I noticed a memorable observation buried in its comment thread. A commenter suggests Twitter may provide a return for its investors, but the commenter thinks it can’t “make money,” as in generate recurring revenue. To this, Dave replies:
“I don’t remember what your definition of “making money” is. To me it means money shows up in my bank account that wasn’t there before.
Frankly, I don’t know why you’d want to spend time reading them, but Techmeme is currently tracking dozens of blog posts that have sprung up today regarding Twitter’s business model.
The most consistent phenomenon I’ve witnessed from observing web-culture for the past 12 years is this: When something new comes along and half the tech/new media geeks I know can’t live without it and the other half detest it — I get ready for a tsunami of “what’s the business model?” pontificating, followed by a ferocious chorus of, “Oh yea?”s.
Dave’s right. Making money is a business model. If creating (or buying) something that you can then sell for more than it took you to create (or buy) it, that’s a business model. The wider the spread between the cost and the sales price, the better the business model.
Bottomline: The folks who created Twitter are in the business of developing web products and, well, selling them. The top guy there created Blogger.com. He sold it to Google. Creating and selling Blogger was a business model — a great one. Does Blogger.com today have a viable business model? (That was a rhetorical question, by the way.)
Oh, yes, something else: The folks who created Twitter have created other things that no one found addictive — or even mildly helpful. Some people call such attempts that don’t work out failures. Smart people like Evan Williams know they are just part of the business model of making money.
In the previous post, I linked to Kevin Rose’ post about the WSJ.com adding a Digg button to the bottom of pages throughout the site. Obviously, the real news in Kevin’s blog post is that every story that is “dugg” becomes “free” if accessed through Digg. In other words, if you’ve ever wanted to link to a WSJ.com story but couldn’t because you didn’t have a subscription — or you don’t link to articles that most people can’t access, you now have a hole through their paywall. This means that people like me, who have never before clicked on a Digg button, will be doing lots of clicking (I have a subscription) so I can help the WSJ.com executives “free” WSJ.com while not really “flipping the switch” immediately.
You also have a way to get the “free” headlines delivered to you via RSS.
As Digg offers an RSS feed of search terms, I tried out a search for the term WSJ.com with the “sort-newest-first” option selected. With an RSS feed of that search result you can, well, do all the RSS tricks you want. For example, in addition to the obvious thing you can do — add it to an RSS newsreader — you can display WSJ.com headlines on your Google/ig (or iGoogle) page (or the gazillion other Ajaxy personalized home pages out there) like this:
I’d really rather be sending any traffic directly to WSJ.com and not to Digg. If, for example, they started their journey to free by removing the paywall-filter from several of their category RSS feeds….
[Here's a test: If you don't have a subscription to WSJ.com and you can click this link and end up there, then, well, the WSJ.com is free. See the "update" below for the secret to this trick.]
“A top business-side executive at Dow Jones & Co. said it is premature to assume that The Wall Street Journal Web site will definitely drop its paid subscription model, despite comments by Rupert Murdoch that the change is expected. “It is jumping the gun, people are jumping to conclusions here very quickly. We haven’t even closed the deal yet,” said Michael Rooney, senior vice president and chief revenue officer for the company’s consumer media group. “Mr. Murdoch would like to have the largest, most robust site in business. Free is a way to look at that. But there is a lot of detail behind that. You have to work that out. You don’t just flip the switch.”
Mr. Rooney, who, no doubt, is a wonderful individual, nonetheless, sounds like a Presidential press secretary trying to explain what the President meant to say. However, Rupert Murdoch said what he said. Clearly, he didn’t say “everything that is paid for today is going to be free” and he didn’t say, “We’re going to flip the switch on this as soon as the deal closes.” But according to the AP, he did say this: “We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million, having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth.”
My speculation (based purely on reading and listening to news reports of what Rupert Murdoch and WSJ executives have said over the past 90 days) is this: Almost all of what we today know as the news, features and opinion content of the Wall Street Journal and the “general business news” of WSJ.com, will come out from behind the pay wall. However, access to certain real-time financial data, corporate research, background and other business mission-critical and industry-vertical information and data will continue to be available via subscription — in some cases, a very expensive subscription.
Update: Well, geez, louise. According to Kevin Rose (the Mr. Bigg of Digg), starting tonight, anyone can make a particular story “free” on WSJ.com by merely clicking a Digg button. Of course, that means that someone with a subscription, say, someone like me, would have to click that button first.
Here’s what Remote Digg, WSJ.com style, looks like:
“Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation, said today that he intended to make access to The Wall Street Journal’s Web site free, trading subscription fees for anticipated ad revenue. “We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having one million, having at least 10 million-15 million in every corner of the earth,†Mr. Murdoch said, referring to The Journal’s online readership.
This ends (at least, it’s the “end of the beginning”) the longest-running media debates of the online-era. I’ve blogged about this topic extensively and speculated recently that Murdoch’s savvy numbers-crunchers had helped make this decision months ago. I’m sure there are some “rest-of-the-story” details, but the facts have been pretty much laid out over the past 90 days.
Indeed, in many public venues, including last month’s Future of Business Media conference organized by PaidContent.org, both WSJ Publisher Gordon Crovitz and WSJ.com’s Alan Murray, were coy in their remarks (publicly and privately) regarding the topic, but clearly telegraphed its inevitability. Publicly, Crovitz indicated there was a clear path to making more content freely available, as a way of expanding readership. The corporate line has been fairly transparent that it was all a matter of when, not if.
(I’m writing something for one of our magazines and need your help. What business lessons have you learned from your dog(s)? Read on, and add your lesson as a comment.)
For most of my life, I’ve lived with dogs. They’ve played different roles in my life: friend, surrogate-sibling (at times, I think my parent’s favorite child was the dog), worker (as in bird-dog), surrogate child (at times, my children have felt our favorite child is the dog), and, more times than I’ve realized, teacher. Indeed, by watching and observing, I’ve learned many business lessons from the canines who have mentored me. Here are just a few:
1. Always greet customers with excitement and enthusiasm, even when you just saw them three minutes ago. They never grow tired of thinking they are the most important thing in your life.
2. Don’t confuse your tail with a goal worth chasing.
3. Sleep as many hours a day as possible but always be ready to play when the chance arises.
4. Don’t be afraid to get dirty — indeed, relish it.
5. When the big folks are feasting, if you know how to work things, you’ll be able to feast, as well.
6. Barking a lot is annoying, however, if you don’t bark a lot, when you do, people spring to attention.
7. Don’t bark at the mailman. He’s been known to have a dog-treat in his pocket.
8. The more you display how you don’t need a leash, the less you have to wear it. Conversly, if you’re always tugging on your leash, you’ll always have to wear it.
9. The joy is in digging the hole, not in having the hidden bone. But it’s also reassuring to know there are a few bones hidden.
10. Biting someone never leads to anything good.
11. Continuously learning new tricks keeps you young.
12. Don’t forget to stretch yourself throughout the day.
13. Always make your masters think it’s they who are in charge.
14. (Add lessons you’ve learned to the comments…)
By the way, pictured in the photo accompanying this post are my current business mentors, Kate and Feste.
On June 22, I wrote a long explanation of why the sale of “business.com” is not merely the “domain name” story it was being spun on that day when it was leaked the company was on the market. Last night, it was announced that Business.com was purchased by RH Donnelley, the Yellow Pages company. This morning on NPR, it was still being spun as a URL story. (Another example: the lede of the Wall Street Journal article is, “The Web’s original high-price domain name has been sold again — for another lofty price.”) That’s the easy story. Hey, I own the URL SmallBusiness.com, so I guess I should shut up and agree. So I will. It was all about the domain name.
According to Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org, “the auction for the company was heated, and initially included IAC, New York Times, DJ and News Corp. IAC didn’t end up bidding, News Corp dropped out as the price went above $300 million, Dow Jones couldn’t pull it together in the wake of all the turmoil with News Corp bid, and New York Times was in there until late in the game.” (For the record, I learned about this first from PaidContent.org, who beat the Wall Street Journal in reporting it last night.)
Despite there being a real company with real revenues and earnings, I will say this: The domain name did matter as did the steadfast commitment of Jake Winebaum. While most people today know Jake as an “online” guy (back in the day, he was head of Disney’s online unit), I still think of Jake as a magazine entrepreneur. He’s several years younger than me, but from afar, I’ve always “looked up” to him as a great role model for being scrappy, determined and creative. Most importantly, however, is his ability to see a few moves beyond what is happening at the moment. We once did a project that appeared as an insert in one of Jake’s magazines, so I had the chance to be an “ad salesman” along side him as we schlepped our way through a day’s worth of meetings at a long-ago CES (he may or may not remember the project). You learn a lot about someone when you pitch major advertisers with them. I knew from the experience that Jake is not a guy you bet against.
So, yes, I love this story. Jake understood the opportunity and risk — and he lived through years of smart-ass scorn from lots of people in the bleachers who had no idea what he was doing. I am happy he is vindicated.
And just for math purposes, let me note: The $7.5 million that Winebaum reportedly paid for the domain name (although, through the years, he and others have waffled a bit on what exactly that price was and how much of it was in cash or “paper”) represents about 2% of the sales price of the company. If Jake had not spent that $7.5 million on the URL, would he have been able to sell the company sitting on that property for $350,000,000? That’s what you call a $342,500,000 question.
Later: Several additional facts came out in the RH Donnelly press release: Business.com has $50 million in revenues and 100 employees (”technologists?”). Winebaum will become president of RH Donnelly’s interactive unit. And the transaction includes “considerations.”
I’ve lost count at how much in NBA fines Mark Cuban has had to pay for things he’s written in his blog about the league. As an owner, he’s never been slow to publicly express what others probably feel, but won’t say.
So, when I saw a NY Times story about the possibility that an NBA referee gambled on games in which he officiated, and potentially made game-influencing calls, my first impulse was to see if Cuban had written anything about it. (Some of his fines have been associated with complaints about officiating.) And of course he has.
While I’m sure other team owners are all “issuing statements” that were drafted by the league office or their attorneys, Cuban’s statement seems to be written straight from the gut — unfiltered. In other words, classic Cuban.
And this time, his post is not going to get Cuban fined. Rather, if the league follows his advice, it could be a valuable asset he is providing them.
Quote:
“The NBA took a hit today. Behind that hit is a catalyst and opportunity for significant change that could make the NBA stronger than it ever has been. Its a chance to proactively put in place people, processes and transparency that will forever silence those who will question the NBA’s integrity. I have complete confidence that David Stern and Adam Silver will do just that and the NBA and our officiating will be all the stronger for it.”
I’m sure there are those who will parse his post differently, but as I read it, it’s both a supportive, endorsing vote of confidence in those with whom Cuban has had a run-in or two. Because he blogs, we’ve all been able to listen in.
Observation: This sounds rather daring, if you ask me. I’m definitely going to have to look into this trend. Has anyone else heard about this blogging thing? Surely it’s just a fad thing. What next? CEOs setting up, OMG, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Yea, right.
“The company that grew out of business.com — a search engine used by businesses to find products and services — is now on the auction block, and could fetch anywhere between $300 million and $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Closely held business.com is expected to attract a host of interest from the likes of media companies such as Dow Jones & Co. and New York Times Co., these people said. Requests for comment from Business.com and the New York Times were not returned yesterday evening. Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment.
While the coverage today is focusing on the domain name and the search-engine, it should be noted the company recently launched a “user-generated-content” component of the site called “work.com” — a very wiki-like platform. I might add, work.com seems very influenced, to the point of flattery, by an approach and ethos of the first iteration of SmallBusiness.com — an iteration that was retired in 2002. (I’m in no way suggesting work.com is a knock-off, merely that it follows much of the same spirit and approach of the 2000-2002 version of SmallBusiness.com*.)
The “work.com” part of business.com is, to me at least, the most compelling aspect of the site. Almost everything else you can find on business.com is standard data licensed and aggregated from third-parties. And while the search functions are impressive and have been honed through years of work — while most people thought they were out of business — the site’s business model has appeared to depend greatly on a form of advertising arbitrage that buys traffic from other search engines and resells that traffic to advertisers — at a higher rate. (Note: I am not implying that “arbitrage” is in any way an inappropriate business model in this case. It can be in other cases, i.e., splogs that carry Google ads. However, in their case, Business.com is adding value to the search by narrowing its focus to business-related websites, resources and products. Also, if someone from Business.com wants to challenge my suggestion that advertising arbitrage is the key to a significant portion of their revenue, I will be glad to add that clarification to this post.)
[Update & Clarification: As the coverage of this news on the tech-blogosphere has been heavily dominated by the suggestion that what is in play here is a domain name for $300+ million, I feel more compelled to point out that, despite it's snarkiness, Nick Denton at least understands what the business value of the strategy the folks at business.com have followed. As I noted, the arbitrage business is scalable and profitable. The "user-generated-content" portion of the strategy -- work.com -- adds a component of "social" and "user-generated-content" to the site that is, no doubt, contributing greatly to the SEO, link-pulling mojo of the site. In other words, like it or not, there's a business at business.com -- not just a domain name. Also, Om Malik explains other assets that go far beyond the URL that Business.com represents, primarily the affiliate relationships, etc.]
My main point is this: It’s not a URL they are trying to sell for $300-$400 million. It’s technology, traffic and a proven and scalable business model that is currently generating (according to the report) $15 million in profit — and some traction in showing they have a model that will attract engaged “participants,” not just one-off “users” or “searchers.”
That said, I will note it’s an incredible brand/URL for the right purchaser — and I hope Jake and Sky receive a massive boat-load of cash for everything they’ve put into it.
*Background and disclosure: Hammock Publishing today owns SmallBusiness.com, so one might assume I’d like to perpetuate the myth that the news today is all about the value of a URL. (Granted, it has quite a bit of intrinsic value, as a Google search for the term “small business” will display.) From 2000-2002, SmallBusiness.com was owned by another venture that I and others invested in. That venture failed. Its failure was a classic, poster-child dot.com bust story. It sucked. It was, without a doubt, the worst experience of my professional — and in many ways, personal, life. After archiving the content of that earlier iteration of SmallBusiness.com for three years, I launched a wiki-platform small-business knowledge base on SmallBusiness.com last year. The site is an avocation, passion and laboratory at this time. But, hey, I’m an entrepreneur, so go figure. Another disclosure: I’m a long-time fan of Business.com founder Jake Winebaum, from his magazine entrepreneurship days and of Work.com and Business.com editor Daniel Kehrer, who I knew in his magazine-editing days and later. (More about the history of SmallBusiness.com here.)
Recently on this blog, I dipped my toe into a debate about the age of individuals who start and run businesses. My point then (and now) is that while intuitively convincing, the empirical evidence related to business creation and success suggests that numerous factors are important to the success of an enterprise and that if you focus too much on one factor (age), you’ll be lulled into crediting the wrong factors — and making connections that perhaps should not be made.
So it is no surprise I — at least on an intuitive level — agree with and endorse the arguments made in this NYTimes.com article that American education, societal, cultural and parenting factors may be playing a role in juicing up entrepreneurial urges among American young people.
However, lest we forget, the whole “idea” of America was created by individuals who were small merchants, farmers, artisans and others who were, what today we’d call, “self-employed.” I’m all for celebrating youthful entrepreneurship, but I merely want to remind people that the idea that opportunity is something provided by big institutions — and not created by individuals — is a notion that was popularized in the Industrial Age or that dates back to pre-colonial European institutions that placed power and opportunity into the hands of religious, feudal, or other forms of tribal entities.
There may be something about contemporary American society that is encouraging young people to get in touch with their inner-entrepreneur, however that “inner-entrepreneur” is part of a DNA that can be traced back three centuries.
Apparently, there has been a debate going on for some time about whether or not “ghost-blogging” is okay. Shel Holtz recaps it here and then weighs in on the issue. Read it. Shel is not a fan of the notion of ghost-blogging: “Blogs aren’t just another business communication channel. In fact, blogs were created and popularized by people who were fed up with traditional business communication channels.”
I agree with Shel on this one, which may sound funny for someone who has ghost-written more words for others than I’ve written for myself. And while I have no doubt I could ghost-blog for someone else (I could get into their head and master their writing-style), I think my ghost-bloggee and his/her communication people would be missing the point — the opportunity — of this conversational media platform.
Shel makes an excellent suggestion for senior executives who are considering outsourcing their blog posts: “An executive uncomfortable with writing can opt for a podcast; talking may come more naturally. He can participate in real-time chats.”
“Stick a microphone in front of a CEO and say, ‘What would you like to tell your employees today?’ and you’ll get a much quicker buy-in than sitting a keyboard in front of them and saying, ‘blog a message for the world to read.’ A word of warning to corporate communicator-types: Don’t script it for the CEO…with ‘podcasting,’ voice is not a metaphor for writing in a conversational, believable fashion. Voice is actually voice.”
The Important Part: In the current issue of BusinessWeek (and 
If you want to be out in front of the next Chris Anderson book every marketing consultant — and worse, your boss — will be quoting in a few months, go ahead and read this Wired magazine article from the March issue that was posted this morning: 
My speculation (based purely on reading and listening to news reports of what Rupert Murdoch and WSJ executives have said over the past 90 days) is this: Almost all of what we today know as the news, features and opinion content of the Wall Street Journal and the “general business news” of WSJ.com, will come out from behind the pay wall. However, access to certain real-time financial data, corporate research, background and other business mission-critical and industry-vertical information and data will continue to be available via subscription — in some cases, a very expensive subscription.
(I’m writing something for one of 
On 
While 
*Background and disclosure: Hammock Publishing today owns SmallBusiness.com, so one might assume I’d like to perpetuate the myth that the news today is all about the value of a URL. (Granted, it has quite a bit of intrinsic value, as a Google search for the term “small business” will display.) From 2000-2002, SmallBusiness.com was owned by another venture that I and others invested in. That venture failed. Its failure was a classic, poster-child dot.com bust story. It sucked. It was, without a doubt, the worst experience of my professional — and in many ways, personal, life. After archiving the content of that earlier iteration of SmallBusiness.com for three years, I launched a wiki-platform small-business knowledge base on SmallBusiness.com last year. The site is an avocation, passion and laboratory at this time. But, hey, I’m an entrepreneur, so go figure. Another disclosure: I’m a long-time fan of Business.com founder Jake Winebaum, from his magazine entrepreneurship days and of Work.com and Business.com editor 
Apparently, there has been a debate going on for some time about whether or not “ghost-blogging” is okay. Shel Holtz 
