Wow, it never ends. Smart people at "old" companies continue to think that they are entitled to earn the same level of profits simply by doing the same old thing in a new channel.
At the same speech, Lack said it could be 2009 before digital music becomes a large and profitable business for the major music companies. "I'm not making any money on this," he said. "(Apple Computer CEO) Steve Jobs ... has got two revenue streams: one from our music and one from the sale of his iPods. I've got one revenue stream that a proctologist would have a hard time analyzing. It's not pretty."
Hey Lack, have you completely lost sight of the fact that customer needs change, and that when they do, revenue streams change (i.e., The Profit Zone moves)? Don't ding Jobs because he's smart enough to recognize that distributing bits is a commodity business, unless its differentiated via brand, ease-of-use, etc.
But Music Co's are hardly alone in this. Newspapers are right there with them. At the Media Center's Mobile Media conference a few weeks back, Rafat Ali (yep, same Rafat) was brought up at the end of the first day to talk about mobile media deal flow.
Instead, he did the unthinkable; he told them exactly what they needed to hear, saying (I'll call this a paraphrase, but I'm 99.99% confident it's a quote), "The thought of newspapers playing a major role in mobile borders on ludicrous." (I can't believe no one blogged this!)
The old media execs went, sorry... ape shit... and got super defensive. After all, they were at the conference to learn how to start "dabbling" in mobile (while Yahoo, Google, MSFT and dozens of start-ups have hundreds of folks building next gen mobile offerings).
The best statement from one of these guys (again, a paraphrase), "The 18 year olds don't come to us now, but in 10 years, they'll want our offering." Yeah buddy, after 10 more years of XBOX 360 and Virtual Earth, Yahoo Music and Local Traffic Widgets, and Google searching, they're going to beat down your brand's door. Uh huh.
Customer needs change. Profit zones move. And while the newspapers are busy thinking their core competency is collecting whuffie (err, Pulitzers) for writing gilded prose, their competitors (who embrace both technology and innovation) recognize that the Newspaper's real competency was in being a market maker, and are busy intermediating (right Pete) every relationship they can.
But hey, what do I know. If I were 64, earning $600K a year and sitting on millions in stock, I'd probably be using my profit to prop up my flagging stock price by paying divdends and doing stock buybacks, and running my online division as a "profit center", instead of investing in the future. Not.
I've been meaning to write this for about six months now, but a picture over on Marc's blog today finally motivated me:
While I agree with much of what Marc wrote in his post, that's not really the point of this post. Rather, the point is the advanage that Microsoft has (over Sony) in tying "entertainment consumption and achievments" to personal publishing, through a ubiquitous identity system.
It's not hard to imagine XBOX 360 flowing a gamer's "verified" high scores, feats, wins, etc to their MSN Spaces 'blog'. Think Google Video, then think 3 minute snipets from a duel or frag fest (along with the necessary "I rOxOred u" smack talk) published to Spaces; the only thing better than winning is showing off your moves to the entire world in perpituity, no?
Of course, the XBOX 360 isn't all about gaming; it's also going to be about photos, music, movies and more. This meta-data (music playlists, movies watched/reviewed/rated, etc) can and likely will automatically find its way to Spaces (where the user can selective chose what gets published and who can see it).
And, "that's not all"... Like Yahoo, Microsoft has a broad suite of services tied to a core identity; think MSN Music, Shopping, etc. Heck, we already heard about Microsoft Virtual Earth being tied to Spaces.
Marc (like many of us) of course groks this; he calls such applications DLAs -- Digital Lifestyle Aggregators -- and is helping Tribe.net become a meta container app, into which disparate data from innumerable sources flow. This gives Tribe a huge advantage; it's completely open and customizable. It also gives it a huge disadvantage; it's not turnkey (integrated), which raises the bar on required user sophistication. MSN Spaces, like it or not, has been (seemingly) successful by, as Torres says, keeping it simple, and shows no signs of opening up (broadly) to third party services.
Yahoo's position is similar to Microsoft's, as I wrote the other day when commenting on Yahoo's Movie Recommendation Engine, though minus the living room presence. (Perhaps someone over at Yahoo! will give Sony a call and try to get PlayStation 3 tied to Yahoo's ID? Hmmm...)
Like I said, none of this is really new thinking; most of us have been thinking about it since SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, etc flipped a bit... many more since first groking XML, CDF and RSS years before that. That's not all that interesting.
The interesting question is... are you thinking about how your company fits into this evolving ecosystem, how you can benefit your customers, and how your traditional revenue streams will need to evolve?
I'd love to hear your thoughts, worries, and dreams (here, your blog or privately).
Last Fall, I met and became fast friends with a couple of guys building some "next-gen" (my words) stuff in the social media space. They're still at it, and still in stealth mode, so no names today. Anyway... they were kind enough to invite me to one of their, for lack of a better term, "board meetings" at CommerceNet last week.
As explained to me, the best way to think about CommerceNet is as a next-gen (there it is again) Xerox PARC... but with commercialization intent in addition to research. Said again, think of it as a place where the best and brightest technical talent can mingle, collaborate, get some early seed cash (and office space) as they organize their plan for world domination -- an EIR for technical entreprenuers, if you will. I dig that, a lot.
The "board meeting" I sat in on was, well bizzare... the CommerceNet principals who sat in were... Pleasant (to the point of 'Nice'). Interested. Engaged. Helpful. Informed. Modest. Like I said, bizzare. ;-)
CommerceNet has occasional open houses (open to all) at their Palo Alto, CA offices and was supportive of the formation of 106 Miles (an ongoing meet-up for entreprenuerial techies). I'd strongly encourage you to check them out if you're in town.
My thanks, again, to my SF friends and the folks I met during my visit; hope to see you again soon.
Netflix has long advocated that one of their key differentiators is their proprietary Cinematch movie recommendation engine, fueld by dozens of ratings (or in my case, 725+ ratings) by millions of subscribers.
The engine walks you through a seeding process, where you confirm your age (from your existing Yahoo! profile), specify your general interest in Hollywood/Mainstream vs. Independent flicks, then rate a half dozen titles across a variety of genres. You're then given a sample set of personalized recommendations for movies currently in theatres, movies on TV (with the option of removing channels, like HBO, that you might not have), new releases on DVD, and from "Movie Fans like you".
Notably missing is integration with Yahoo! 360 (emulating Netflix Friends), Yahoo! TV (where showing me tonight/this week's TV movie recommendation would be most valuable...), and of course, RSS support. (It'd also be nice to be able to rate a movie at the main Yahoo! Movies page without having to write a review.)
So that's heavy on product and light on strat... Looking longer term, we now have Yahoo with both music and movie recommendation engines, digital music distribution, strong ties to the studios (including in-show placement, ala Apprentice and Contender) and an ever growing pyschographic ("behavioral") profile of its users... A Netflix tie-up to power Yahoo DVD Rentals would be a much more compelling deterrent to Amazon than the recent deal with Wal-mart... OTOH, can NFLX afford to help anyone with the presence of a Yahoo! make the transition from physical movie distribution to VOD/VOI? Tough spot to be in.
On another front... Now, who's going to write a little routine to scrape my NFLX ratings, persist them client-side in an XML file, and feed them into Yahoo's engine? If you know of such a beast (that works from a logged-in state, i.e., doesn't require handing over my NFLX or Yahoo userid/password), please drop a note!
Andy Beal has, at least in my aggregator, a scoop on talk of how Microsoft will rank bids in their pending search engine marketing marketplace. Paraphrasing Matt Lydon, Senior Sales Director of Search, MSN in a MarkterToday article:
"Question: What payment model does MSN plan to implement?
MSN – More similar to Google, and not Yahoo. They won’t have paid inclusion. They add another component to the CPC x CTR. They take into account the audience and use that info to determine the ranking. "
Beal comments:
"This last comment is particularly important. I have been briefed about this new ranking component for AdCenter, but I don’t recall MSN announcing this to the outside world. It could be that I missed the official announcement, but nonetheless, MSN is betting that it can provide a viable alternative to Google and Yahoo, by offering an algorithm that includes a “demographic” element. As an advertiser, you can have the highest bid, the best CTR, but if a particular user or demographic never seems to be interested in your ad, you may find yourself slipping in the rankings."
Seems like a logical extension (to the degree that it's transparent, easy to manage, and supported by robust reporting for the advertiser). Two quick comments:
1. This may have less to do with MSFT trying to "provide a viable alternative", and more to do with patents. Hindsight being 20/20, one of Overture's biggest mistakes may have been in only patenting an algo to rank by PPC. Regardless, it'll be interesting to see what effect this has on keyword-demographic (couplet) markets reaching liquidity.
2. Inside baseball here... it's rather ironic that the good Dr. Gary Flake ends up working at MSFT, who will now have the most "complicated" ranking algo, given his resistance to exploring the idea a couple of years back. I'd say more, but I actually like the good Doc, despite his now being 0-2 on topics we disagreed on. ;-)
Microsoft Virtual Earth: Comprehensive Local Search
"Comprehensive Local Search" may be a stretch (as I haven't actually played with the product yet)... but from the snipets Battelle just published over on Searchblog, it sounds like A9 Yellow Pages (90 degree photos [45 degree in the case of MVE]) meets Google Earth (maps, directions, fly-overs, satellite), meets Yahoo! Local (search), meets InsiderPages (local directory & reviews), etc. That's comprehensive in my book.
More (emphasis mine):
" For example: Say you are buying a house and want to look at the traffic and weather patterns around that house for the past year. In addition, you want to find nearby dry cleaners and restaurants. MSN Virtual Earth would let you view that information on one map, layering each piece of information you request and giving links and more details about those items.
MSN Virtual Earth will provide a core set of reference points such as maps, aerial imagery, photos, consumer and business directories, and ratings and reviews. In addition, MSN Virtual Earth will allow the broader community of consumers and businesses to contribute their own location-specific information to create an always expanding, dynamic and relevant local search experience.
We did not share the entire feature set for MSN Virtual Earth today but some of the key capabilities that we showed include:
· Imagery – satellite maps and a unique 45-degree-angle view of buildings and neighborhoods · Hybrid Maps -- street maps overlaid over satellite maps · Full-bleed Map Views – a nearly full screen map that users interact with · Scratch Pad – a online clipboard for customers to perform multiple searches and plan their activities "
The product is due this summer. (A link to an alpha/beta version is expected today; I'll update when I see it.) The first and most obvious question; where's the API?
Update: SEW is running a story too (naturally) and offer up these two big juicy pictures (click the first one to enlarge it)
Update 2: Here's a video interview of the MSN Virtual Earth team. (via Channel9) 32 minutes, 133MB (but streaming, don't panic). 5 minutes of foreplay before the demo starts. A couple of take aways... MapPoint.msn.com currently does 20MM SOAP API transactions a day, so no doubt we'll see APIs for Virtual Earth. Interactive controls are better than Google maps, including scroll wheel support (for zooming), keyboard panning, and variable speed panning. Scratch Pad allows you to place POIs, then email or blog (to MSN Spaces) deep links to map plots of the POIs; this is a great local search/event/planning experience (IMO). The Eagle Eye (45 degree) is shot via low altitude flyovers; while very cool and useful for perspective, I don't see it as a replacement for the 90 degree shots that A9 Yellow Pages is doing in environments with substantial vertical density (duh), such as the downtown city views used in the video interview.
KRON4, a local Bay Area TV station, is holding a Blogger Meet-up at their offices in San Francisco. They've found 278 local bloggers to invite directly... but the event is open to all.
I'll be in Maui that week celebrating my birthday; hopefully they'll do this again before year's end. And hopefully, other locally based Media companies will take this to heart...
Update: The Blogger.com crew smells a hoax. Perhaps. It'd be a smart move for KRON to post something on their own domain about the event...
Update 2: Brian Shields, Online News Manager for KRON4-TV, drops by and adds a comment reassuring us that it's not a hoax. Undersanding that the proof is in the pudding (ever wondered about the origin of that expression?), he says, "But you're right... we will get something posted on KRON4.com about this by tomorrow."
Update 3: I'm happy to report that KRON has posted a lovely slug on their home page (below) to settle the issue. Additional notes: 1) they've linked to the invite, 2) Blogger.com boys, perhaps you can update your post?, and 3) invoking Marc Canter and Kaliya Hamlin for a moment... this really wouldn't have been an issue if we had a ubiquitous Identity system we all trusted.
Here are the full event details and invite text:
From: KRON-TV Location: KRON-TV 1001 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA When: Saturday, June 11, 12:00pm Phone: (415) 441-4444
KRON4 television is hosting a meet-up of Bay Area bloggers at noon on Saturday, June 11, 2005. Snacks will be served and we'll have a little memento for attendees. There's no agenda other than helping facilitate this meet-up. We recognize the significance of the personal media revolution, and we want to listen to what you're saying. We think this is a good way to start.
All Bay Area bloggers are invited to attend, so help us spread the word. We've come up with 278 e-mail addresses so far, but many bloggers don't make theirs publicly available. Feel free to add e-mail addresses to the invitation list.
We want this to be an informal and intimate get-together, so come prepared to meet and make new friends. Use the RSVP function of Evite to let us know if you can make it. We want to make sure we have enough snacks for everybody.
Amazon.com is known to have a great internal multi-variate test environment, allowing it to selectively roll-out and measure the effect of new features and designs. Tonight, I got some quality time with their latest home page redesign (that, or it's gone live for everyone and they haven't bothered to announce it).
The first thing that caught my eye was both the absence of (an abundance of) Tabs and the amount of space allocated to Search. It seems clear that the behavioral training web users are getting at Yahoo, MSN and Google has encouraged the promotion of site search across the web, i.e., this isn't new or unique to Amazon. What is a bit unique is how much the search boxes seem to pop due to placement and color. Or, maybe it's just me...
Oddly, "Search Amazon.com" is a drop down, with "Web Search" being the other option... it seems redundant with the A9 box, but perhaps that's just my assumption and Amazon is looking to prove it via usage measurement.
Moving from search to tabs... I had specifically gone to Amazon to check out the $49 RAZR deal I heard about over at TechBargains, and boy was I confused when the Electronics tab was missing. I went to click the "All 31 categories..." tab, but as soon as I rolled over it, up popped a full product category list:
Well that's cool, I suppose. Only one problem; the presentation order. Yahoo used to do this nonsense on their home page; organizing services by categories like "community" and the like. With the latest design, they've had the good sense to list their products and services alphabetically. I'd recommend the same to Amazon for their product categories listed in this pop-up; I agree with them tossing their services/tools beneath the dividing line.
Beyond all that, the only other oddity is tossing the logo in a tab to get 'home'. Not a big deal there (they've already trained me to click tabs over the years), but it's "nonstandard", which could lead to some confusion.
Well, I specifically excluded Google's MT work from my coverage of their well orchestrated PR event yesterday, as I wanted to give it special treatment.
(Can you tell I'm enjoying my new found bandwidth?!)
"Translation work being done by the Labs merits a UN award. In case the Europeans are reading this, today was ample proof, that Google is more devoted to the UN and the world, and many of our esteemed leaders in Washington.
This perhaps was the most seat gripping part of the whole day. Google took hundreds of thousands of documents translated by the United Nations, matched them up with terabytes of data, and throw billions of gigahertz cycles at the problem and came up with a translation engine, that puts everything in context.
Remember context, for it is going to be the key operative word in the future. Using its complex algorithms, Gooligans are figuring out ways to put context to unstructured data, context like time and date and language. It will be interesting to see how Google becomes a context company. Unfortunately, it is my postulation. Google did not provide enough context to its amazing achievement as yet, but still impressive nevertheless. "
The rest of his take on the Factory Tour and his unmet expectations is pretty funny; give it a read.
"Microsoft has released an updated suite of tools for hosting providers, which will make it easier for Windows hosting customers to create blogs and online forums.
This morning, Dave Winer linked to a bit from the rssweblog around a quick interview that Amit Malhotra got with Steve Ballmer. Malhotra paraphrases Ballmer as having said:
"Besides the next release of MS Office will have the tools to publish blogs as part of its collaborative tools, watch for them ."
The next version of Office (likely 18 months out) is likely to see heavy RSS integration, both on the publishing and 'consumption' sides. We should expect that the next versions of Outlook and IE (IE 8 here, not the pending 'minor' 7.0) will be RSS clients (though to the best of my knowledge, MSFT hasn't said so), and that the functionality will see its way to the Mac and Mobile versions of those apps. And of course, there's the "Start" web client as well.
Which makes Ballmer's other comment in Malhotra's interview very interesting (again, a paraphrase):
"We believe RSS is important and will be around for a while but it is not going to change the world. It is a little too simple, that is also the reason everyone’s using it. We are working on more existing powerful stuff, around XML/web services [sic] that will address many issues beyond RSS. RSS will be around, but whatever we are working next will be cooler and more prevelant."
Obviously, Winer called MSFT on this. Scoble's doing a little soft shoe.
The implications are all already understood... In the words of Yoda, "flexible they need be, start-up CEOs".
This will be old news to some of you, but I'm still digging out... hopefully some will get something out of this...
I played around with AOL's new beta browser a couple of days ago, hoping to get a sense of how viable the offering was, but primarily to play around with their RSS support. Skipping the former for now, I'll relay my experience with their RSS support.
1. It's hard to find the feature at first; it's located on a 'slide-out' on the left hand side, in small text, rendered vertically. I run a 15.4" screen at 1920x1200, so your mileage may vary
2. Once found and opened, you're presented with a few default AOL Feeds (good); but in a very small font (again, note my resolution) that, unlike the main HTML render area, can't be changed.
3. I attempted to add my Feed; in doing so, I was presented with a dialog that didn't allow for OPML import (or export). More importantly, after I added my Feed, I was not presented with my Feed items, but rather a message that my Feed was "loading". Assuming that AOL wasn't spidering directly from the client but rather through a central proxy that needed to queue the request up, I went on to try a bigger fish... Trying a few more Feeds, I eventually realized that the beta doesn't support Atom. (Hey guys, check out the Universal Feed Parser if you need help, eh?)
4. I wandered over to TechDirt in order to test the Automatic Feed Discovery feature, no joy, despite the existence of a REL tag (I guess it only likes type "application/rss+xml"). So, I headed to Russ Beattie's site, and low and behold, it worked, making for a nice click+right-click add experience. Only problem? Russ uses a relative path instead of a fully qualified path, so it was added in a broken state.
Additional issues: - No differentiation in presentation of New, Modified or Old items - No ability to delete, lock, flag, etc items - No ability to search, etc
In short, a crude (but somewhat expectedly so) first beta; "A" for getting in the game, "D" for competitiveness.
Some folks were smart enough to review the web-cast preso slides ahead of the presentation (they seem to be offline now), thereby learning about "MyGoogle", which is expected to launch as a Labs offering by days end. (Surely others are embargoed as well.)
Note, officially it's not called MyGoogle, but I'm sticking with that for this write-up...
MyGoogle is part of a "Fusion" initiative at Google, which aims to integrate various Google offerings, and put them under user control in a way that makes sense for said user. In the case of MyGoogle, that means the ability to customize a Google Homepage (while still having one click access to the default Google "Classic" Homepage). Items that can be added include:
Gmail
Stock Market (including indexes and ad-hoc listings)
News, including Google News and primary sources like the NY Times, BBC and Slashdot
Weather
Movies
Driving Directions
Quote and Word of the Day
Once customized, users can manipulate the UI via:
In place editing
Drag & Drop content component re-ordering/placement
Pitching the product, Marissa Mayer emphasized:
Ease of setup - I actually had a bad experience here. I chose to create a new account instead of using an existing Google account, which resulted in my customizations being lost. However, re-entering the customizations was easy, and I quickly got to a happy new home page...
Easy to read - Agreed, for the most part. I like that the page is liquid instead of frozen, so I can take advantage of my laptop's widescreen (WUXGA) format. I don't like that I'm forced to have all of my customized content below the Google search box (padded with a ton of whitespace), though I certainly understand why its implemented that way from a revenue perspective.
Speaking to the future, Marissa said that "Universal RSS" support would be available in 1-2 months, allowing access to any source instead of the chosen few listed above.
Later, Steve Gillmor asked about support for RSS Enclosures; the answer (paraphrased), "we don't know, but if there's user demand, we'll go there."
Asked by Pamela Parker if Google would use its broad knowledge of user interests and behaviors across Google properties to render targeted ads on MyGoogle, Marissa said, no, not at launch, but that they'd reserve the right to do it in the future.
9:00 - 10:00 am Registration & Continental Breakfast
10:00 - 10:15 am Welcome & Introduction
10:15 am - 12:00 pm Progress in Research and Ads
12:45 - 2:00 pm Opportunities Today
2:00 - 2:45 pm Future Directions
2:45 - 3:45 pm Q&A – Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin
3:45 - 4:30 pm Product Demos
Update: An interesting web-cast "slide" showing Google's 70-20-10 approach, and the recent product line launches & enhancements. (Quality isn't great.)
Update 2: The Dir of PM for AdWords is now speaking, and shows a slide with the relative cost per lead for various advertising methods. (Later: Henrik Torstenssons drops in and comments about the validity of this comparison. Henrik, no argument here, I'm in relay mode, and they didn't talk at all about Piper Jaffrey's methodology... I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, which might not be smart.)
Talking about the AdWords API, he mentions the ability to programmatically allow 'retail advertisers to adjust ad spend against inventory levels', a meme I started over two years ago when I was leading the development of Overture's Adveriser Web Services/DTC-XML biz & product strategy. Let's hope there's some original thinking pending later in the show. (Sorry to be snarky on this, I just hate that Yahoo has done so little to evangelize this stuff that Google is once again going to be able to co-opt their thought leadership. Frustrating.)
Update 3: Showing some openness, Google shared some info on its agency and vertical (i.e., category) advertiser consultative sales approach (smart, as they've been criticized as of late for being antagonistic). Yahoo does something similar, though it's not clear that it's as robustly developed:
Update 4: Want to know where those stellar financial returns are coming from (beyond distribution deals, growing search volume, etc)? How about a claim of algo changes that have improved CTR by 40%. Yikes.
Update 5: Google reveals how Adsense for Feeds will be integrated with Blogger; basically, users will need to past the ad HTML code into the post Footer page (after setting up an account in AdWords/AdSense, shown below).
Update 6: Looking for info on "MyGoogle", "iGoogle", or "Fusion" (naming really unclear right now? Check out my early cut, Google Launches MyGoogle.
Not surprisingly (mostly because it was noted at the time of the AskJeeves acquisition of Bloglines), BusinessWeek is reporting (via an interview with Mark Fletcher) that Bloglines intends to enter the blog search fray this summer, taking on PubSub, Technorati, Feedster and the ever improving BlogPulse.
Could MSN, Google and Yahoo be that far behind? Unlikely.
I've been awaiting the release of this functionality since my exchange with Chuck Richard of Outsell. As I wrote then regarding Chuck's comments about Weather and Stocks:
"These were, in fact, the two most popular 'Channels' on PointCast, and would be a welcome addition in my aggregator. In fact, there isn't any type of content that I can think of that I wouldn't want to have the option of including in my aggregator."
Some quick thoughts now that the first iteration of the offering has launched...
Sunny: - Single "Feed" per geo region (international geo's and metrics supported) - Single "Post" per "Feed" that gets updated (vs. a constant stream of posts) - Formatted, graphic presentation of essential weather data
What I mean by the above is that Bloglines chose not to be constrained by the current notion of how a Feed should work; rather, they use the Feed metaphor from an organizational standpoint, and present weather (largely) as users prefer to see it.
There's always room for improvement, so here's some (hopefully) constructive feedback...
Cloudy: - Update frequency appears to be twice daily. It's 830AM right now, and Bloglines currently shows that the forecast was last updated at 1130PM yesterday; weather models change frequently and freshness is correlated with accuracy (rightly or wrongly) in most people's minds. More updates = better. Also, even when the forecast is updated, the Feed doesn't display as new/modified; that'd be a nice signal to the user.
- No click-through for more detailed weather info. What does light rain mean? How much will fall over the period? How much snow will accumulate? What direction is that wind blowing. This stuff matters in different scenarios.
- Only supported within Bloglines. I understand the desire to differentiate the platform, so I'm not surprised by this. And, I suspect the non-standard implementation wouldn't hold up in other aggregators. I'll leave it there since I'm not the target market, but just say that I'm still looking for a good weather solution in my primary aggregator.
- Email support appears to be broken in Outlook. I emailed the forecast to myself as a test. None of the condition icons rendered (yes, even after clicking to download images).
All in all? A nice start for those who use Bloglines as their primary (or online) aggregator. I look forward to seeing how the team approaches Stocks.
Netflix Shines as Blockbuster Blinks and Wal-mart Withdraws
Some interesting developments in Netflix's world over the last few days.
Yesterday, there was an announcement that Blockbuster was testing a $17.99 price [Yahoo News link which will rot] for its core 3-out service (up from its current price of $14.99, and slightly higher than Netflix's comparable offering at $17.49).
This morning, Wal-mart announced that it was withdrawing from the online DVD rental business. Rather, it will refer its existing customers to Netflix, and will promote Netflix on its website on an on-going basis; in exchange, Netflix will promote Wal-mart as the best source for DVD purchases.
On the analysis front... It's not clear that a repricing by BlockBuster creates a margin expansion opportunity for Netflix near term. BB is still differentiated via its coupons, and should be able to roll-out online-driven in-store pick-up (and likely returns) "soon". Regarding Wal-mart, Netflix has already announced that the deal will be non-material to its financial results... though the 20% stock gain (so far this morning) on top of a recent run on other news certainly can't hurt employee morale. Most importantly, none of this addresses the looming threat of Amazon's entry, nor a solid answer of why Netflix wins when distribution eventually goes digital.
Om Malik breaks the story that Newsgator has acquired FeedDemon in a "cash and stock" deal (I suspect these are modest numbers); FeedDemon developer/CEO Nick Bradbury will join Newsgator as their lead client architect.
Chris Pirillo has an insider interview with both teams; insider is not meant as a pejorative, it just seems clear from the questions (and timing) that this was amongst familiars... all good in my book. Regardless, definitely worth a read.
Dave Winer speculates that a Mac client acquisition, perhaps NetNewsWire, will follow. [Ed: Sure, I suppose, if the price were balanced with the available/addressable market.] He then extends his thoughts to a roll-up vision, stating:
"I imagine that Newsgator will roll up with Feedburner (they share an investor), and Technorati may become part of this deal too. The goal? Get large enough to go public or merge with something going public (SixApart) or get bought by Microsoft."
Well, that's an interesting series of comments. FeedBurner could certainly join the growing Newsgator empire, but that would be tying up with the wrong end of the micro-content stack. A more logical move would be backward integration with a publishing platform, or forward integration with a marketplace owner; of course Dave doesn't care for ads in Feeds, so if you're a fan of his, chalk his comment up to a clever, low-key dig. ;-) Regardless, unlike other components, FeedBurner is best served by achieving escape velocity as a standalone player providing a network service ala the collapsing Overture model of old.
I'd largely say the same of Technorati, though they clearly are a better fit for the 'consumption' end of the stack. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see some of their offerings integrated with Newsgator properties (as perhaps the default, but changeable, provider of various services). Mainly, people need to stop thinking about Technorati as a "search" company and recognize that they're an analytics shop. If you think about them in those terms, it becomes clearly that they could be providing a variety of services to a variety of players/segments. Rumor has had them repositioning into the enterprise space as well, but take that as the second-hand info it is.
The sleeper here, touched on lightly in Pirillo's interview, is TopStyle, the client-side authoring environment. Many of us having been looking for such functionality to be integrated with an aggregator for (freaking) years. (At PointCast, we went so far as building our CDF authoring tool using the client shell, though that was a (horribly) rushed effort from the get-go, and our broad CDF support was killed long before we could have dreamed of integrating the two). The question here is if Newsgator decides to go full-stack and marry TopStyle to its own publishing API. Obviously, that would have all sorts of interesting implications.
Today, with full details coming to light, I may have undersold it. Wow. Just wow.
If you even remotely touch online, mobile, consumer, etc as part of your business, you need (IMO) to take a look at these XBOX announcements and understand what threats and opportunities it represents for your business.
Update: - Five minute video of the new unit (work safe), via Scoble - Michael Gartenberg puts out a 'first take analysis' on Xbox 360; no new thinking here, but he picks up the Trojan Horse meme, "...Xbox 360 is clearly poised as a Trojan horse ready to invade the living rooms of Windows users everywhere ..."
I'll be attending the full Supernova 2005 conference, and will be selectively blogging thoughts, session notes, etc. Perhaps more interestingly, I'm hoping to connect with some of the speakers for impromptu news & views.
If you're attending (and from this week's pre-pre-party attendance, it looks like many folks will be), or speaking, and want to connect, please drop a comment or an email: moreinfo at buzzhit dot com.
Hope to see you there!
(BTW, haven't decided on Gnomedex yet... if you have any thoughts on this year's show, pls let me know.)
I last wrote about Social Local Mobile Search (there's a moutful) in October of last year. (Some prefer MoSoSo -- Mobile Social Software; I say "whatever".)
Google, which has component offerings across the board -- Social, Local and Mobile Search... and some intersection with Mobile Local Search -- has now acquired Dodgeball [via Gizmodo], which cleverly integrates all of the above to help, umm, meet someone "special"...
The best coverage I've read is from SiliconBeat, who got some ecosystem thoughts from "friend-of-the-Dodgeball-founders" Clay Shirky; some of it here, check out da'Beat for the rest:
Dodgeball uses the mobile phone as its native platform, someplace Google wants to further extend it's reach.
Dodgeball does a better job mapping to real-world social networks than Orkut, since there's an actual reason *not* to friend someone in db, namely that you don't want to get spammed with 100 SMSes a night.
Google's mapping work is good at "Where am I?" and "Where is the gas station?" but not so good at the question "Where are my friends?" Dodgeball is really good at that.
The first point is well understood; Google (and MSFT) are charging hard at Mobile (no pressure Russ).
The second point is interesting; I'd personally rather have "allow SMS messages" be a flag for each contact on my one (and only) social network than have a series of different social networks with implicit permissions, but as I've written before users/groups/permissions are tough for most to grok.
The third point is perhaps the most interesting then. I've written recently on map overlays, and from that perspective, friends is yet another obvious option. I think the smarter (or at least broader) "framework" for thinking about this was presented by Paul Reddick from Sprint at Kelsey; location based services, near field communication and mobile payments. (Paul mentions 'friend finders' in the community section.)
If you haven't read my notes from that session, check 'em out, think about Dodgeball + Google, then do the abstraction bit.
Om Malik, a smart guy who I often agree with, writes that Yahoo Music is "playing in mono" because, "...it works only on Windows XP, it works with about a dozen music players, and doesn’t support Mac. In music industry parlance, this is an EP, not the full album!"
Now let's think about this, acknowledging that Yahoo!, like every other organization on the planet, has a laundry list of services it would like to build, and only so much capacity to do so...
1. XP only: So Om, are you advising Yahoo to spend finite resources to build a rich client for people you haven't upgraded their OS in 10 years (Windows 95) or 7 years (Windows 98)? BTW, if you look at the product page, you'll see Win2K is listed as supported...
2. Supported players: You're right! Yahoo's offering supports more vendors, more devices, and more device types than Apple's offering (did I mention I have an iPod Mini that I can't wait to toss?). And, since it's based on MSFT's PlayForSure standard, which is open unlike Apple's walled garden, the list will continue to grow.
3. No Mac support: Well, yeah. Why build something (at launch) for a sliver of the (OS) market, with a fiercly entrenched competitor and audience? And if you've used iTunes on a Windows machine, you know it doesn't look, feel or act like a native app (heck, it makes Tiger look speedy).
As for the market reaction, perhaps it's worth looking at this a different way.
1. Yet another major player, with a lot of reach and a fair bit of marketing savvy, has joined the "anti-Apple" consortium. Apple has a history of trying to take on the mass that is Wintel, and that history isn't marked by monumental success.
2. Napster, $170MM war chest notwithstanding, is looking like a little fish in a really big pond
3. It's already known that Yahoo is working on co-branded/branded consumer hardware offerings (though I'd agree that there's reason to be skeptical on this front); co-branded or not, a (well integrated) bundled offering (ala iPod/iTunes) in time for the holidays seems like a real possibility
4. The barriers to entry are quite low; the barriers to "doing it well" are much higher, but it's not clear that Apple remains advantaged as dedicated music players give way to converged media devices and smart/cell phones. Said another way, there's a lot of mutation happening, and it's not clear that a single stack (Apple) can be out in front of it all.
Pete over at PC4Media listed my name in a post regarding the uproar over the AO/Technorati “OpenMedia 100 list”. The title of this post is a spin on Pete’s, which while absolutely hysterical (what a way to start my day yesterday), isn’t exactly work safe in today’s PC corporate culture (consider yourself warned) – Pete’s post.
So first and foremost, Pete, thanks; I appreciate being recognized for making a positive contribution. And the feeling is mutual; I hear you guys are working hard to build something of value too. But really, it’s a wasted vote; I’m not nearly self-important enough to make the list. Alexa does have buzzhit! as a top 150K site (LOL) though, so perhaps if they broaden the list just a bit, I’ll make it on share page views?! ;-)
Far more important to me is the list I’m on through which most people are reading this right now, i.e., your Feed list. You’d think most people would be satisfied with that, but even while they claim to be busy “subverting the hierarchy”, they’re really just busy constructing a new one with themselves on top. Hypocrisy at its best.
Honestly, I haven’t read a single positive thing on this effort; in addition to Pete, Jeff (and Mary through Jeff) and Elle have POVs that are worth a look (as is the comment section of Dave’s post, which I’m intentionally not linking to). You’d think people so intimately involved with OpenMedia would know better how to launch a self-aggrandizing campaign, wouldn’t ya?
It looks like DNS propagation from my hosting change is finally starting to take place... which means that you should begin to consistently get pages without broken links, emails that don't bounce back, etc. Joy!
The good news from all of this is that I'm getting about 20x the bandwidth from the new hosting solution... at 2/3rds the price. Which means a future that includes images, and perhaps eventually, sound and video. Double joy! ;-)
FeedBurner has announced the availability of Total Stats Pro, their for-fee (i.e., Premium) Feed measurement/reporting service; remaining consistent with the company's positioning, they've simultaneously announced welcome additions to their free reporting offering.
Where does that put things? FeedBurner sums it up nicely:
Existing: * Feed circulation reports, still free!
New: * Ad summary performance, free * Circulation trend chart, free * Detailed feed item statistics, Total Stats Pro * Referrer report and where is my feed republished, Total Stats Pro * Detailed ad metrics, Total Stats Pro
Pricing is based on the number of Feeds managed via Total Stats Pro.
There are a lot of reasons to want enhanced Feed reporting... the most important one might just be for people who plan to run Ads in Feeds... yup, independent ad impression/click data, to keep Google, Yahoo, et al honest. $5/month isn't much to pay if you've got real revenue flowing through your Feeds.
(On the other hand, I can think of some very cool widgets extending off the 'exhaust' meta-data that would broaden the appeal of this offering... I really need to find a decent PHP dev to conspire with.)
Update: Niall Kennedy smartly points out some of the potential technical holes in FeedBurner's implementation (which warrant a response from the company). These are pretty well known issues, so my fingers are crossed that FB has been clever in addressing some of them; Niall's right, however, in that ultimately many of these issues will require cooperation from aggregator devs.
Niall also states that, "If hosted services such as TypePad or Blogware are not already thinking about how to integrate more statistics into their own interface the idea that some of their users are now paying an extra $5 a month for an outside service may be enough motivation to get the job done."
Perhaps; I've pointed this out in the past as well. The issue isn't about getting the job done, though... it's about where best to spend scarce dev resources. Forward integration is always possible (granted, timing is important)... but with Yahoo & MSN moving quickly (and Google finally showing signs of life with the intro of Google Mobile), the build vs. partner question around Feed Mgmt is very valid in my mind. It'll be interesting to see how TypePad decides to leverage its desirable position in the value chain.
Lean start-ups (with a clue) generally don't grow their teams substantially unless something else is afoot... So it was with more than a small smirk that I read Scott Rafer's post that Feedster is hiring a Sys Admin, Sr. Engineer and Product Manager; substantial, and I'm sure, much appreciated additions to the scrappy team that is Feedster Inc.
Just hit the refresh button, and amazingly enough, Kevin Webach, super producer of upcoming conference Supernova, has managed to sell 100 seats (and counting) for an impromptu dinner/get-together up in SF tomorrow night. [Hat tip Jeff Clavier]
I'll be there to suck down some tasty Thai and, hopefully, meet some interesting new folks. Drop by if you're in town.
(As for Supernova itself... I'm 95% confident I'll be going, though I haven't bought my ticket yet. Drop a note if you plan to attend; having a few smart friends around will make it all the more worthwhile.)
Greg Linden tries to take an even tone, but is eventually overwhelmed by GWA's bugs, including 'pre-fetching delete actions' and being served pages using someone else's login and password; even for a "Labs" project (i.e., real beta), these are unacceptable.
Dave Winer acknowledges all the privacy concerns and GWA's "ultimate intermediary" position, but stretches things further... "But what about the other side -- content modification. What if Google decides to change the content as it's accelerating it? Think it couldn't happen? Well you must have been on vacation when we discussed AutoLink in February."
Jeff Jarvis doesn't mince words, and offers up a host of 'headline' choices, including: "Google steals content", "Google declares war on publishers", etc. He also links to an approach to blocking GWA.
As for me... well, I'll point back to a quick bit I wrote during the AutoLink debacle and note that Google really seems to have developed a blind spot for how influencers, power users and analysts perceive its moves (or in the sorry state of Blogger.com, lack thereof).
Personally, I'm going to pass on GWA (certainly while it's handing out info that should be kept behind a password/userID) until Google has the good sense to promise that it will (minimally) 1) flush the click-stream data GWA gathers and 2) not change published content.
Playing catch-up over the last week or so... will update this post a couple of times...
socalTECH is reporting that Experian has acquired LowerMyBills.com for a very impressive $330MM + $50MM earn-out. LowerMyBills will be part of Experian Consumer Direct, which also includes MetaReward and Affiliate Fuel. It'll be interesting to see how many more companies originally built through search arbitrage will strike it big; NexTag.com is the one that most folks see looking for an exit (IPO or otherwise).
Jeff Clavier calls thefacebook.com's numbers stunning, and he's not talking about either the $12MM investment, or the projected $40-$60MM valuation. Rather, the off the chart usage metrics he compiled from a chat with TFB's VP of Corp Dev.
Back on the pay-per-call scene, socalTECH is also reporting that newly formed Jambo (includes former NetZero co-founder Ronald Burr, former Callsource co-founder John Melideo, and former Overture CFO Todd Tapin) will be pursuing the already super-crowded intersection of Local Search and pay-per-call. Other former Overture folks (broadly) noodling around this market include Paul Ryan via PerformLocal, and Warren Kay at Vista.com. Jim Barnett, former AltaVista CEO (acquired by Overture) is also rumored to be building a new advertising play up in SF, though it's not clear that it's focused on Local/SMEs.
SiliconBeat announces the launch of GoogSpy, a site that allows you to research the terms [keywords] that your rivals are bidding on. It's news because it's Google I suppose, but EpicSky has been offering something similar (for Overture) for a couple of years now.
SiliconBeat also notes the launch of NiftyGuy, yet another local referral/search/directory site (egads). Sounding much like Craig Newmark, founder Dominic Ang is quoted as saying, "We really see this not so much as a business but as a community service. We'll let the community take it where they want.''
In dueling reseller deals, Kelsey Group covers Google UK's follow-up deal (the first being Yell) with Thomas Directories to resell Google ad solutions, vs., Yahoo Local's (U.S.) signing of Dex Media for similar duty. Crack addiction is a terrible thing... now that major YP's are hooked, it's not clear they'll ever be sober enough to see past the short term gains. Time will tell if this was a wise partnership strategy.
Turning from YPs to Newspapers, Kelsey's Greg Sterling also notes the official launch of "hyper-local" player BackFence's rollout in its original seed markets. Lots of questions around this still, but if you're into social media and/or citizen journalism, you'll want to watch these guys closely.
That's enough for now... and hopefully some of it is actually 'news' to you at this late date.
I sat down for a casual breakfast and stream-of-consciousness chat with Ari Jacoby, CEO, VoiceStar, a few weeks back (during the Kelsey show) and managed to take a few notes amidst talking, listening, eating and various stop-ins from passer’s by.
The following is a reformulated (i.e., not literal nor verbatim) transcript of our discussion; I just formatted it this way as I think it’s easier to read (and far quicker to write)…
Q: Where does VoiceStar fit in vs. DCCI and Ingenio?
A: As a continuum, VoiceStar sits between the two. Call-tracking and pay-per-call are bifurcated. Call-trackers generally have sophisticated measurement, and may or may not be an ASP. VoiceStar is provided as an ASP service, with a focus on integration and PPC billing to accommodate publishers and agencies; very different beast. Ingenio has there own bidded marketplace; our clients license or implement their own. We can be both keyword and category driven.
Q: Is an auction model sustainable in the pay-per-call space?
A: Absolutely; calls represent the highest quality lead. [Ed: And, importantly, everyone groks calls, whereas not everyone really gets clicks]
Q: We heard talk on one of the panels about “re-packagers” moving into this space, ala SME Global Solutions, TrafficLeader, et al in the click space. Thoughts?
A: Arbitrage, flat fee packaging, call bundles are all potentially part of the mix, depending on customer need. [Ed: IMO, the arrival of re-packaging intermediaries seems to be positively influencing SME adoption in the PPC space; the same may hold for pay-per-call]
Q: How are you guys funded?
A: Self-funded; we’re profitable.
Q: Who are your current customers?
A: [Ed: I’m aware of a few non-trivial customers, but they’re not publicly disclosable at this time.] We have a deal with Russell Perkin’s InfoCommerce group. They provide our solution as a test-bed for their clients. We also have a test-bed for potential customers.
Q: What’s your revenue model?
A: Depends on our customer’s needs. We have deals both service provider and revenue sharing models.
Q: Everyone’s abuzz about mobile. I’ve been cell phone only for 3-4 years now; seems like routing mobile calls could impact margins?
A: Lots of mobile uptake in Europe. Can be very expensive if not implemented correctly.
Q: What does correct implementation look like?
A: Correctly means partnering with providers, pricing appropriately and being able to differentiate mobile vs. land-line on the advertiser side.
Q: Interesting. That makes me think that it’d be valuable for an advertiser to know (for mobile only folks like myself) what a customer’s proximity is to their billing address (i.e., are they actually mobile, or are they simply sitting at home with a cell phone)
A: That’s a very good idea; it would make sense as part of our roadmap
Q: The question of the day in the PPC world is click fraud. What does phone fraud look like and what systems do you have in place?
A: Call frauds a lot harder to accomplish than click fraud; different volume levels. We have lots of tech in place. We eliminate traffic from historically offending geographies. We also have hardware and software solutions to block certain call patterns. Finally, all calls are recorded for billing assurance; we flush these pretty quickly [Ed: Ari is sensitive to both the storage costs and privacy issues of persisting recorded calls for a long duration.]
This was a good chat (which hopefully translated well). I remain optimistic about the potential for bidded pay-per-call, and am glad to see new companies emerging in the space (and deals getting signed).
Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before.
Please note that Google Web Accelerator is currently in beta test mode. If you have any problems using it or have suggestions for how we can improve it, please see the Google Group devoted to it.
Also note that during the first part of our beta testing period, users outside of North America and Europe may not see much improvement in their web page loading speed.
2. How does Google Web Accelerator work?
Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:
Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
Compressing data before sending it to your computer. "
Reaction late tonight, or more likely, tomorrow...
Chris Yey was kind enough to invite me to HBS Tech's Business 2010 dinner tonight. I'm headed there and expect to meet up with the always enlightening and entertaining Jeff Clavier.
So, we're going to split event duty and hook-up at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto around 9'ish, for dinner/cocktails and dish on what we heard. Niall Kennedy and Mike Rowehl are also expected. Come on out if you're in town!
Update: For the most part, I enjoyed the Business 2010 event (bonus: the food and wine were respectable and plentiful)... though for much of it, I couldn't help but think, "Folks, go read The Profit Zone". Thanks to Chris Yeh again for the invite. (A quick nod also to the PCOW crew who we chatted with briefly after the event.)
Also... Note to self... if Mike & Elle are involved, it'll likely turn from a small casual cocktail into a big f'n scene (in a good way). Large turnout last night... didn't count, but I'd guess ~20 people. Didn't really get to spend time with everyone, but it was great to meet & chat with Matt Mullenweg (better known as Photo Matt, or "that Wordpress/Ping-o-Matic" guy) and the fabulous GlendaB (who I never got to hang with while at KRD).
I'm going to steer clear of that debate for now, but respond to something that TechDirt's Dennis Yang said.
Quickly then, Denis... the golden rule of SEM is... He who owns the marketplace, rules. (Droll, I know...)
Which is why, when you wrote (emphasis mine):
"With Urchin, Google is looking to impress upon more of its users the importance of analytics. Conspiracy theories aside (as in, is it good for Google to have access to all of this data?), the idea is that better analytics will lead to smarter ad spending, which is ultimately good for everyone."
... you were speaking (I'm guessing) from instinct, not analysis of the impact of a bidded marketplace at liquidity.
"On the surface, the play here is obvious: if you hold ROI constant and increase conversion rates, CPC prices will rise (proportionally). Said another way, as long as all of the ROI doesn't go into the advertiser's pocket -- and it won't, because their competition will eventually wise up and use the same solution, thereby increasing competition -- Google will profit."
So what really ends up happening (assuming rational marketplace participation) is:
1. Advertiser 1 gains a short-run margin advantage using analytics
2. Competitive advertisers figure this out and start using analytics
3. The equilibrium ROI is restored (as reflected by increased CPC) , except that:
A. Everyone's now paying Google $200/mth. It's very important to remember that this represents 1) non-TAC revenue, and 2) diversification of revenue streams; and
B. Google's marketplace has 'sucked up' the incremental margin through higher CPCs; and
C. Google has a lot more data on your business
Very seriously here for a moment... if you haven't run a Five Forces analysis on SEM (or more broadly, on continuous bidded marketplaces), you simply must do so; you'll see the game much more clearly. If you don't have the time or horsepower to do it, drop me a note; always happy to help a new client see what's afoot.
"The company reports that its beta test of the service has attracted 400,000 professionals a month looking to connect with employers."
Note that Work.com is (IMO) a redux of Junglee of old (remember them?); rather than employers directly submitting their listings, Work.com scrapes employer web sites for new listings (and actually does a nice job of it, including company, title and proximity drill-downs, plus mapping of the job location, etc). Ironically, you can persist queries with an RSS Feed. (This while we wait for major corps to publish job listings direct to RSS.)
The difference? Search economics. In addition to contextual-backfill, the company offers cost-per-click job listings. I finally got around to writing about this in my Future Framework for Classifieds bit 7 or 8 months ago. Good to see it starting to happen.
First, Feedster. I blew out my cookies during the whole Blogger.com "AutoSave" debacle. Having signed-up for Feedster over a year ago and never having had to log-in since, I forgot both my user id and password (stupid Tony tricks). I emailed customer support several weeks ago; no auto-response, and no human response. Not good.
Second, Bloglines. After being given a friendly ultimatum from Pete, I contacted Mark Fletcher's crack crew about having my Feeds combined and blocking the private advertising Feeds I was testing. I did get a response (from "M.M.") a few days later, which amounted to "I've forwarded your request to the right group". I waited a couple of days and emailed back asking for an update; three weeks later... nada.
The fact that neither of these companies appears to issue a tracking ticket certainly doesn't help things. But the real point... with all the focus on openess, transparency, the effect of blogs on product marketing and management, tracking what's being said about your company... all great stuff, unless you lose track of the basic blocking and tackling of supporting your customers adequately through channels you've exposed and they count on for the most basic of things, like reclaiming a password...
So I've been waiting... and waiting... and... still no RSS from ShopLocal.com.
RSS is slowly but surely finding its way into your newspapers and (some sections of your) classifieds, but nothing from a service for which RSS is the perfect delivery model?
What on earth could be taking so long?
Need inspiration? Check out TechBargains and its ~4700 subscribers (there are two feeds for it) on Bloglines (and who knows how many subscribers elsewhere).
Just a quick FYI... I'm upgrading to a new plan from my existing hosting co (SuccessfulHosting.com). Normally this wouldn't be of note, but I'll actually be moving to a new IP address in the process, which means that the DNS servers will be pointing every which way for the next couple of days. Stay tuned...
I received an email (hat tip and thanks: M.B.) about the launch of JobCentral.com, the new employment site by former Monster founder, William (Bill) Warren. A few things of note:
1. Warren is leveraging an association named DirectEmployers (it's unclear exactly what this is, but it sounds like an Employer's co-operative) along with NACELink (a co-operative of colleges) to fuel his listings database. As classified listings are further commoditized, we're likely to see more and more new/emerging marketplaces use listings from aggregators to break the chicken-and-egg problem of obtaining market liquidity. LinkedIn's original job launch, and, jobs.clusty.com (in conjunction with Indeed.com) are relatively recent examples that spring to mind.
2. New listings are $25.00 each (yep, Warren's competing on price, his only obvious early advantage), or as the press release says, "90% below" prevailing rates. Obviously these are tough economics to compete against for existing major players who've structured their organizations around higher price points... namely CareerBuilder, who not so long ago agreed to 4 and 5 year deals with AOL and MSN (MSFT), respectively (at ~$30MM/yr each).
Is a Perfect Storm brewing in employment classifieds? My magic eightball says "ask again soon".
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
