Can't Find Foundem - Conspiracy?

Saw an interesting Op-Ed piece written by Adam Raff, founder of Foundem, a vertical search firm in the UK that provides comparative pricing on electronics, airline tickets, home & garden items, etc. The crux of Raff's opinion piece is that online search provided by behemoths like Bing, Yahoo -- but in this case, in particular Google -- need to have oversight. He is so passionate about this need for adult supervision that he has dubbed his quest "Search Neutrality" and is hoping to generate enough interest so that the discussion on "Net Neutrality" will incorporate search as well.

Net Neutrality, is a principle whose proponents include activists, consumer groups, many technology application providers (including Google) who are pushing for a law that gives all people equal access to the Internet broadband on a first come first-served basis. SaveTheInternet.com states that

Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Opponents say the whole issue is much ado about nothing and could prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from taking needed action during denial-of-service (DOS) attacks,  The Net Neutrality movement is being addressed country by country, and in the US, the FCC is open to comments at this time. And besides, say a cadre of net engineers, the Internet isn't perfect anyway, and this law may prevent a new one from emerging.

Translated, the fear is that without the law ISPs could possibly discriminate against some websites by slowing packets to and from the server. While opponents fear that legislators could never possibly create a law that would be fluid enough to yield to innovation.

Back to Raff, his own site's treatment by Google, which is detailed here, has made him aware of the phenomenal power search engines hold over Commerce. Raff believes he has evidence that Google did penalize Foundem -- simply for being a vertical search company. He further contends that Google's own products are given preferential treatment at the top of search results. With 90 percent of the search market, Raff argues, Google needs oversight.

It is an interesting arguement -- more so, because of the ubiquity and popularity of search. We all have an expectation of being indexed by search engines -- for free. Conversely, do we have an expectation when we search, that all information that is relevant -- is being presented to us? Are these anti-trust issues? Or communication ones? Does Google et al have the right to block or discriminate certain sites -- when no money is changing hands?

It is quite possible that by virtue of its supremacy, Google has put itself in a situation where, like Microsoft before it, it becomes a victim of its own success -- and people just don't trust it.

Happy News Year!

When I started this blog about a year ago, I wanted to provide advice to all the businesses who found themselves in the odd position of being a news source. I say odd position, because most businesses aside from the media, don't consider themselves as such. They are retailers, consultants, researchers, financiers, professionals, teachers, etc. But more and more, all of these groups are finding that their secondary position is as online publisher, publishing news or maybe more appropriately, publishing information that people find valuable.

I got away from my original mission as more and more traditional publishers, aka news organizations, were hitting the wall. On the last day of 2009, Editor & Publisher, the 125-year old, self-acclaimed "bible for the newspaper industry," stopped its presses for good. The reality was, there just were not enough newspaper (or vendors who served the industry) left to make it economically feasible to survive. And while there is tremendous hand-wringing at the realization that the industry is periled, there is still good reason to be optimistic.

Steve Outing, who was a columnist for E&P, as well as with the venerable Poynter Institute, wrote his look forward in his final adieu. He foresees a world where pulp is saved and news is transmitted electronically to handhelds. One of Outings most prescient hopes is that surviving organizations  embrace making sense of the commentary of the crowds.

I have become a huge fan of reading what the populace thinks. Oh, to be sure the cacophony isn't always pretty. The unwashed mob rears its ugly head time and again. But if you weed through the inane and boorish, you can find reasonable discourse. It would be nice if the inane and boorish might be toned down or even eliminated. One of the best ideas I have ever heard was from Jeremy Gilbert, Associate Professor at Medill School of Journalism, who suggests that sites adopt the authentication api from Facebook. Gilbert explains that with a preponderance of the public on Facebook (and growing everyday), "the Facebook authentication may yield a better behaving audience if they know that their aunt or grandmother may view the comment too." (I could see a lot of nervous businesses who are opening their sites to user comments benefiting greatly from this.)

You see the difference between old media and the new media is that news is in the eye of the beholder. Old media decided what was news. New media leaves it up to the crowds. That doesn't mean there is not need for aggregators, pundits, journalists and paid commentators. It just means that at the end of the day, it is the individual who decides what type of news is most valuable. Non-traditional news businesses need to learn this too. If I am trying to install a new Plasma TV, the site that provides my answer is a valuable news source -- and has a chance to influence me on another topic as well.

So while the 2000s will be viewed as the end of the road for the pulp-based news industry, news itself is enjoying a rebirth. As a new decade dawns, Happy News Year -- from whatever that source may be!

Collate Info from Spy Agencies -- the Way Marketers Do

This Holiday Season, as we all dish on whether we will be forced to go commando on flights in order to prevent any more undie bombers, or whether we will inflict terror on poor TSA agents by parading starkers through body scans, I can't help but wonder why our spy agencies aren't enlisting the same tools marketers have at their disposal.

For instance, folks at Nielsen's Buzz Metrics and Evolve 24 have been collating what people say and do in media and blogs, with how product sales and/or stock prices will perform. They ingest literally millions of articles and blog posts every single day, parse by clients (and their competitors), and look for sentiment toward each subject. They then can predict, with a fair degree of certainty, the outcome of key performance indicators. By semantically analyzing and collating "buzz" about brands -- can't these same agencies do this with "chatter" about targets?

Maybe I am missing something here, but if Amazon has powerful relational databases to know that if I bought a Sony Minicam a year -- I just might want a tripod this year, why can't our spy agencies put together that studying Arabic in Yemen + attending a highly-watched Islamic Center in London + buying a ticket (extra points if paid with cash) + traveling with no baggage on a trip to the US (Detroit, I might add, where the average temperature is below freezing -- did he even have a coat?) -- adds up to "likely candidate to blow up a plane?" At the very least, he deserves extra screening. (I cross at the US/Canadian borders at least monthly and have found some very well-skilled interrogators who ask off-handed, yet key questions focused on my rationale for crossing: what will the temperature in Montreal be this week? Who pitched for the Yankees and Blue Jays? If I don't have an answer -- I should be pulled over.)

While screening air passengers to that level of detail may be difficult (if keeping the airline industry aloft is at all a goal), certainly we should be able to winnow the list from the millions who fly to the thousands who deserve extra scrutiny. Where are the econometricians, the semantic analysts, the library scientists that do Boolean queries?  Maybe the TSA needs a CMO to show how to really build a profile that is predictive.

A season to believe in miracles ... Newsrooms will hire again!

So sayeth E.W. Scripps' CEO Rich Boehne in address at the annual UBS Conference. Boehne described current news offerings as suffering from "a plague of sameness," (McNews, anyone?) and asserts that better quality can broaden the audience. Scripps, which owns 10 stations, is hoping it will be the beneficiary from "a great consolidation opportunity" as weaker competing news stations drop out.

'Tis the season to be cheery as more competition fails.

Tip Jars for Content

It's no secret that news sites are having a difficult time figuring out the monetization of its news online. Goes back to what I have always contended -- people pay for service -- not content. We pay for the service of our news being delivered, we pay our Internet provider a monthly fee and we pay our cell-phone carrier for the service. (We even pay for water that comes in a bottle -- but watch us howl if someone put a lock-box on a water fountain.)

This doesn't bode well when the content provider is not the service provider, aka the newspapers with their online news. The Miami Herald took what many in the industry believe is the equivalence of passing a hat by asking for donations to continue its breaking news coverage. Cheeky bloggers wrote that the mighty Herald had stooped to asking for handouts. Headlines mocked with Brother Can You Spare a Dime. Others like Steve Outing, blogger for the Poynter Institute, approved the move but said it was too subtle (the graphic appears at the end of stories - he suggests a window after a certain number of articles are consumed), too difficult (credit card only -- no PayPal!) and too open-ended (send whatever you want). Outing urged a more blatent, targeted and convenient approach, such as Kachingle (Outing, himself, uses Kachingle) which is sort of the United Way for supporting bloggers and journalists. Pay once and Kachingle doles it out.

Outing makes very good points, particularly in suggesting easier methods of pay. Fundraising 101 says to suggest payment amounts. If the Herald is hoping for $40 per reader, then they ask query should be something like $20 $50 $100 and other. (Museums have a pay-what-you-want model - -but normally for a single day a week -- while charging for other days.

There may be little precedent from other media for the Herald to draw on -- except perhaps from Wikipedia which raised $3m in this fashion. Still, to ease the queasiness, perhaps content sites should look at the financial models of museums -- which rely on annual memberships to fund events and attractions. Bundle content, a discount book and a free map. Suddenly, content sites are selling a service, which people seem to value inherently.

P&G's Content Marketing Serial Folds

This week, Proctor & Gamble announced its long-running serial, "As the World Turns" air its last episode in September 2010. The announcement marks the end of 73 years of creating content - to sell product. Specifically, soap. Which is how P&G coined the name "soap opera." P&G realized that if they produced addicting content, they would build a loyal following who would also hear their product pitches.

The times they are a changing -- but using content to sell product is not. P&G has the art of serving up content to increase audience loyalty mastered BeingGirl.com and Home Made Simple are two web community sites that unabashedly splash the P&G logo and product around. According to Josh Bernoff, analyst at Forrester, "Procter & Gamble's BeingGirl.com, an online community for adolescent girls, is four times as effective as a similarly priced marketing program in traditional media. Initiatives like BeingGirl.com require a long-term commitment," he added.

While the daytime serial has not yet translated to the Web (apparently the costs are prohibitive), rest assured that P&G will continue to be in the content business -- as much as they are in the soap and personal products one.

Days Late & Business Week is for Sale for a Dollar

McGraw Hill is shopping Business Week and the talk on the streets is that the 80 years of content will be available for a stunning $1. That's not a typo. That is one dollar (I am assuming US). So what gives? Isn't the archives of 80 years worth a heckuva lot more than $1 -- as well as the subscriber list of nearly a million names?

I spoke with Reed Phillips, Managing Partner, Philips DeSilva who helped unravel the challenges that print companies like McGraw Hill are facing. "The assets are certainly worth more than a dollar," he agreed. "The problem is the losses are far outweighing the positives." Anyone who buys Business Week would take on the liability of servicing nearly a million subscribers -- "from whom McGraw Hill has already taken the cash." He estimated that servicing alone costs roughly $30-40 million. Additionally, the company lost nearly $90 million in revenue in the first half of this year alone is part of the tale.

"If it was easy to fix, McGraw Hill would have done it," he added.

Maybe so, but loving a challenge, here is what I would do if I had the opportunity.

Make sure all content was digitally available
I don't know whether Business Week's entire archive has been digitized or not -- but would invest to make it so.

Semantically Index All Content
By linguistically analyzing and enriching all content, I would have a better understanding of just what that 80-year archive contained:

• Number of pieces of content under a given topic
• Word count for each article
• Tone of every article by Organization

By the way, I would semantically analyze the comments too.

Relate & Link
Similar content should be easily linked so editors on the back end can find and package it, while readers on the front end can consume it. Business Week is thick with content -- just make it a little easier for people to find related information.

Assess My Content
Is my content heavy in one vertical? Weak in another? Which stories are beneficial to my key advertisers? How can my content help businesses make better decisions? After doing a census, I'd look at ways to monetize that content through licensed reprints, targetted advertising, business search.

Churn My Subscribers
As subscriptions lapse, don't renew them -- at least not the print version. If it costs $40 million dollars to service subscribers -- and lord knows the costs for billing, circulation, marketing, and all the internal support for all those staffers ... scaling back to deliver only digital may be the most sane thing to do.

Would that all of this fix all the problems at Business Week? Possibly. Somehow a day late and a dollar short comes to mind.