Content Matters

Staci Kramer, of PaidContent, interviewed the leaders of the online divisions of leading consumer magazines, Jeff Price, President of SI.com and Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller.

While they covered a lot of ground, what I found interesting was the organizational structure differences at the two organizations.

SI.com is the only fully integrated online brand at Time Warner.  Conversely, Forbes Online is a separate operating unit from the Forbes print product.  According to Spanfeller, their readers use the two products very differently.  They have separate ad sales businesses.  Jim feels that is helpful, as media buyers typically make separate buying decisions and online also requires very different sets of skills, metrics and support structures than in print. 

For SI, the value of bringing it together was important; the SI advertisers were cross-platform and channel-independent.  This creates a team of about 45 sales execs who are franchise experts that could push all of their channels.  That wouldn't have been possible a few years ago; they needed to first demonstrate the value and ROI of the online channel, so it didn't simply become a throw-in for print sales.  But, now that they have established that value, the model better suits their clients' needs.  On the editorial side, it's been easier.  Their top writers, like Tom Verducci or Peter King, are thinking about the needs of the sports fan 24x7.  The writers have, in fact, led the migration on
the editorial side to bring this together.

I'm sure that Staci will add some of her own comments on the PaidContent site.  You can catch the rest of their coverage of SIIA here.

One of the most interesting sessions of the Information Industry Summit (and certainly the one with the longest title) was the "CEO Outlook: New Tools, New Rules - Gaining from the Digital Upheaval as the Net Reaches Critical Mass."

Genesys Partners CEO Jim Kollegger served as moderator of a panel including Clare Hart, President, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group, John Kilcullen, President, Music, Literary & Jewelry for VNU Business Media, IDG Ventures Pacific Managing General Partner Patrick Kenealy and David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas.

Rather than reading a summary, it's well worth watching the full video here.  Again, courtesy of Scribe Media and the SIIA.

David Meerman Scott hosted a panel entitled "Advertising and PR for Everyone: Who is Winning the Race for Marketing Dollars?"

The panelists included Ben Edwards, Director, New Media Communications at IBM and Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Experience Officer for JWT. Manning Field, SVP Branding & Advertising for Chase Card Services was a last-minute no-show.  (Thanks for the heads up, Manning.  Oh, apparently there was no heads-up, just an empty chair.  Of course, Ben and Colleen were strong enough that no one noticed.)

David laid the foundation that for companies who have relied upon having great products for their growth, that's no longer enough.  The traditional marketing and advertising models no longer work.  He described how IBM today has 300 RSS feeds which they use their buyers directly.  They have a portal of all their blogs.  IBM also offers podcasts, for example, 10 minutes from their top IP attorney.

IBM has even developed content for Youtube - for example, this Art of the Sale series of mockumentaries.

Ben expanded that at IBM, they have a very open and permissible environment for self-publishing, available to any employee (over 380,000) worldwide.  They provide tools to their employees for blogging, podcasting and more.  Ben's role is to help market those blogs so the audience can find what they need more easily.  Internally, they have about 3,000 - 4,000 active bloggers, while externally there are many more.

Ben is also involved in marketing communications.  His focus is to move from a traditional marketing approach (high cost, low frequency, low interaction) to the publishing approach (high volume, low cost, high-touch content). 

Storytelling becomes much more important in this new environment.  "Brand Journalism" is how Ben looks at it.  Today, the narrative is no longer under control of mass media.  Even though it's IBM's view, the audience is sophisticated enough to understand that it is a biased view, but that it is still worthwhile.

According to Colleen, the old "dead" approach to creative is the aim, target, kill approach to advertising.  By the time you do that, it's irrelevant.  Experience is the new place where agencies need to be, so you can react and respond to remain relevant.

In terms of new advertising models, Ben describes that IBM "would love to have a small, IBM-branded video widget that users could browse various video content to watch, that would be installed on various web properties which reach our targeted audience.  We would pay a lot for something like that."  Colleen followed that "We've been working to develop branded hubs, where we can reach a specific audience with various types of content.  Unfortunately, no one knows how to price or sell that and is concerned with how that content will distract from their own content."

In closing, David asked whom they expected to win the advertising dollars five years out.  Colleen, in a politically correct answer, indicated that "the clients will be the winners.  We are seeing smarter use of partnerships between multiple agencies and multiple platforms, with the client really controlling the process.  The clients are making the agencies become more cost-efficient and adaptable."

Ben described an environment where "the people who can grab these dollars are those who can publish.  This will include traditional publishers, micropublishers, agencies who learn this world and the companies themselves, as more companies take on these tasks in house."

For more on this topic, check David's blog over the next few days.  And, of course, watch for his upcoming book, the New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Day two at SIIA kicked off with an interview of Tad Smith, CEO, Reed Business Information, conducted by Hal Espo.

Snippets from the Q&A are below.

HE: Where is B2B media headed?
TS: B2B media will probably outperform GDP for a while; there is so much innovation going on and the opportunity to create new value.  Print will continue to slow down; I'm not sure whether that slow down will accelerate or not, but we know the direction will continue.

HE: What is RBI's strategy, moving forward?  What are the key priorities?
TS: We have four priorities:
First is to protect and manage our print decline; continue to get as much as we can out of that and continue to invest where appropriate.
Second, continue to accelerate investment online.
Third is to make sure that our acquisitions (like BuyerZone earlier this year) deliver as expected.
Fourth is to continue migrating the portfolio through continued subscription businesses and electronic products.

HE: In terms of challenges and opportunities, you recently announced the creation of a separate e-division.  But, as you look around, you'd expect it to be more closely integrated.  What are your plans for this?
TS: We have taken some parts of the business that made sense to have centralized and have done so, while others remain decentralized.  We will continue to experiment around the edges on that.  For example, our web templates are centralized, but creation of editorial content is not.  Anything where a critical skill is needed and domain expertise is not required, makes sense for us to centralize.

HE: So, how do you get the right e-DNA in the non-interactive group?
TS: That takes some cajoling.  We are having an internal conference next month in Chicago for editors and content creators, asking "what can you do to drive our electronic editorial process?".  The goal is for them to understand the dynamics of writing for the electronic market and to understand the importance of keywords.

We are also recruiting heavily on the interactive side and also hiring lots of "utility infielders" who understand both the interactive and print sides.

HE: How do you decide what to fund (e- or non-e)?
TS: We're really only funding the e-stuff right now.  We're not doing any acquisitions in the non-e stuff.

HE: What are you doing for user-generated content?  For example, Variety?
TS: Variety has added "pushy question" section where the editor poses questions and users can send in responses.  However, Variety is on an older platform and will be upgraded later this year to a more freeform platform.  We have done more on some of our other products.

HE: Let's talk about risks.  What keeps you up at night?
TS: Attracting, recruiting and developing talent is what keeps me up at night.

HE: So, can you tell us who's going to win the Oscars?
TS: I've seen all five of the best picture candidates.  And, all five pictures are worth seeing.  I'm rooting for Martin Scorcese's The Departed.

You know how those pub super bowl "box" pools help keep the game interesting?  I can recall years ago during Super Bowl XVIII, when the Raiders were beating the Redskins 21-3 at halftime.  For most of the world there was little left to watch.  But, with 30 seconds left and the Skins in field goal range, I was a kick away from a $500 prize.  Of course, the Skins went for it (and failed) on 4th down and went on to lose 38-9.  But, those of us with boxes continued to watch the game and root.

That excitement is now available without the smoky pub or hangover.

Charlie O'Donnell has created the SuperBowl XLI Wiki, with the proceeds going to the charity of your choice.  All it takes is 2 minutes to go to his site, sign up and send $10 to his Paypal account.  So, sign up now and you'll have something to keep your interest besides the commercials.

P.S. For those interested in the technology, Charlie set this up with the free pbwiki.com. 

Fred Wilson was the keynote speaker at Monday's SIIA Previews.

Provocatively, Fred's topic was "Should Content Be Free", particularly in that it immediately preceded a panel of companies in the DRM/content protection space.

You can see the streaming video of Fred's entire keynote here.  Thanks to Peter Cervieri at Scribe Media and the SIIA for making this available.

The themes raised by Fred are not new, particularly to those of you who read his blog regularly.  That said, it was a comprehensive view of where the content business is headed.  Key takeaway: as information moves towards becoming free and the supply becomes near infinite, then the money is in "attention".  I don't typically watch 18 minute videos (Colbert and the Daily Show excepted), but this one is well worth making time for.

For those without the time to watch it, Fred reprised his "future of media" post.  Successful content providers need to:

• Microchunk it
• Free it
• Syndicate it
• Monetize it (put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunks so you can see how the content is being used).

Fred also reiterated his love of the Freemium business model.  He also used a few of his portfolio companies as examples of things that are being done right.  I was pleased that a few Alacra products were included in the Q&A discussion.  (And who says board members don't add value?)

In closing, Fred believes that "free will pay", quoting Stewart Brand in that "...information in the right place and the right context changes your life".  But, the idea of DRM-cocooned subscription content will go away.  Pay-per-view and advertising models will be the way to build content businesses going forward.

And, of course, since information wants to be free, you can grab a copy of Fred's slides over at the Union Square Ventures blog.

Dow Jones CEO Rich Zannino was the lunchtime keynote speaker Tuesday at SIIA.

Coming less than a year after Dow Jones' reorganization, it was an interesting opportunity to hear how the changes are taking shape and what he sees in the coming years.  To set the agenda, Zannino talked about the forces impacting the news and content industry.

Transformation Accelerators like Google and Apple are changing the industry.  Martin Sorrell refers to these companies as "Frenemies".  While Google has an obvious impact, Apple has had huge impact.  The iPod has moved from a music player to a player for information; now the new iPhone will deliver music, news and information.

The convergence of technology and content has led to many new competitors to traditional media players. usage is shifting to online and mobile, especially for young users.  As Warren Buffett said, "old readers heading to cemetery while young readers head off to college."

Traditional media markets are clearly shrinking with declining profit margins.

So, what then....

Dow Jones sees opportunities in this.  While digital distribution of content is on the rise, not a zero sum game.  Total consumption of media is growing.  Online market is fastest growing (20% growth and 20% net margins).  Global information services is still growing at 8% with 17% margins.

In this time of information overload, the need for trusted information has never been greater.  For Dow Jones, the trusted brands and authoritative content help customers find what they need.  However, Dow Jones needs to make information tailored to the user's needs and available within their workflow.  Factiva is more than content - it's content, tools and visualization put in front of professionals, to find what they need, when and where they need it.

According to Zannino, going forward, the Company wants to "superserve" customers to have them use Dow Jones content across all channels throughout the day.

For iconic media companies like Dow Jones to adapt to the new environment, they will have to make huge changes in the way that they do business. Not every traditional media company will try to adapt, and others will try and fail. 

For Dow Jones, the long term strategy is straightforward:
Transform from a company heavily dependent on print revenue to a diversified company where users access Dow Jones information across multiple channels.
In 2006, 70% of DJ revenues were from print advertising.  For 2007, they project print below 60% and their ultimate goal is to get it below 50%.

After their reorganization, they have fully integrated all channels into the core brands. 

Last year, Dow Jones invested about a billion dollars in the Company.  They launched Weekend Journal and increased their color printing of the Journal, to make Dow Jones more accessible to consumer advertisers.  Spent $500M to acquire Marketwatch which tripled online visitors and doubled online ad revenues.  With the newly integrated Factiva and MarketWatch, Dow Jones is well-positioned to integrate content across multiple channels to reach multiple markets.

Tolman Geffs, of Jordan Edmiston Group, led a session entitled Vanishing Icons.  Along with Carter Bales, of Wicks Group, and Jim Friedlich of Zelnick Media, he raised the question of whether the traditional media conglomerates would succeed going forward.

Tolman Geffs started us off by contrasting a few sets of competitors, one who had navigated change well and another which had failed to do so.
For example, comparing Knight Ridder to Scripps:

Knight Ridder:
-Modest online growth
-CareerBuilder (worked well)
-Real Cities (less so)
-Smaller bests (not enought)
-Dismantled in 2006

vs.

Scripps
-Big bet on cable in 80's & 90's (Food Channel, H&G)
-Now, big bet in online comparison shopping
-Acquired Shopzilla & uSwitch for $1b
-Big growth - 12x trailing EBITDA

Also, Ziff Davis vs. United Business Media:
Ziff Davis Media
-Highly respected b2b publisher
-Bought by PE fund Willis Stein in 1999 for $780 million
-Struggled to expand online
-For sale, but no buyers for whole business

vs.
United Busimess Media
-Now out of the newspaper business but major player in international b2b media (CMP Media,PR Newswire, Commonwealth)
-Acquired 15 companies in 2006
-Significant online and data growth

Carter Bales, Managing Partner for the Wicks Group of Companies, who focus on middle-market companies in specialty media talked about the market environment.  Despite challenges of the recent years, the fundamentals of the business remain fairly  strong.  However, many weaknesses of media conglomerates are showing through.  While the public markets used to reward scale, the advantages of scale and diversification are reduced.  Today, timely-managed companies with top management will produce more economic value than these largely diversified large media companies.  The economy will now reward performance rather than scale.
Private equity has done very well in this market because:
1. These are solid businesses
2. Can be bought when they're not performing well from large companies

Jim Friedlich, Partner, Zelnick Media, a private equity-backed holding company.  They have made acquisitions including a market research company, Columbia Music Entertainment, Naylor Publications and others. 
They have moved print companies to online.  For example, bought Lillian Vernon and have grown it to 50% online, where it had been 15% a few years ago.

Friedlich believes that some of the giants will wake up and thrive ("Gulliver media"), such as NewsCorp and TimeWarner. 

According to Bales, going forward, due to disruptive business practices and technologies, management will matter, as opposed to the old days of monopolistic publishers. 

As context, Geffs displayed a slide showing that Google + Yahoo added $5.5B in revenue in 2006 (49% growth), while the next 10 largest media companies together added $4.6B in new revenue (4% growth).

The clear message was to buy small companies, build them up and sell them off to private equity firms.  Scale is no longer a benefit; it can merely be an anchor.

John Blossom served as moderator of the first panel of the day, focusing on Traditional Content vs. User-Generated Content.
Panelists included Dan Morrison, CEO of ITToolbox, Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler and Jeff Guilot, EVP, Product & Technology at Hoovers.

John Blossom began with an overview of where social media plays in the area of
mission-critical business information.  Today, social media plays in the areas of Expert Insights, Business Intelligence, Business Development, Hiring, Public Relations, Collaboration and Research.

Social media is now gaining attention of professionals; for example, LinkedIn has moved into the top 200 websites this year according to Alexa.
Social media enables new types of structured insights:

• Tagging
• Linking
• Endorsing (voting)
• Six Degrees

Dan Morrison, CEO of ITToolbox (competitor to KnowledgeStorm, TechTrends) discussed user-generated content as a model for business information.

ITToolbox is an Online community for IT Knowledge sharing:

• 1.2M pages of user generated content
• 1.5M unique monthly visitors
• 740 advertising customers
• Up to $120 CPM

Their premise:
Media & Technology industries are merging.  New media models are coming from technology - user-generated content (community-powered models) will lead some segments.

Is this a disruptive opportunity?
- How will media consumption be distributed?
- How will ad perfomance compare?

User-generated content is quite different than traditional content.  They see community-powered information as a utility:
- Share knowledge, discuss trends, solve probelms, review products and services - all to increase productivity and efficiency.
-online communities on desktop throughout day
- Communications and content merge - communication as media

Advertising performance:
Performance improves as targeting and context improve
- Communities=high volume content, granular topics
- participation = active interest in topic
- Ad performance improves by targeting this granular level and active context.

They believe a disruptive opportunity exists if they can deliver a higher consumption of information and better performance for customers.

Next up was Jim Fowler, founder of Jigsaw Data.
Jigsaw, one of our "50 Content Companies that Matter" is an online business directory allowing users to buy and trade business cards.  Their users build and maintain the database. 
Today, they have more than 5.2 million contacts, with, for example, 49,000 contacts at Deloitte.  Their goal is to map (and keep updated) every business organization on the planet, leveraging the user community to do so.  Their position is to be to the information content what Wikipedia is to Encyclopedia Britanica.

Jim talked about the risks of user-generated content:
1. It's the wild west.  Wikipedia has constant battles between users trying to manipulate the data.
2. Managing a community: must make all product decisions by involving the community.
3. It's a new business model; for Jigsaw, the individual users are the ones who build and maintain the database, but their revenues come largely from large corporate sales.  Interestingly, Jigsaw is now seeing revenues from data cleaning (for client's CRM systems) starting to rival their revenues on the sales and marketing side.

The third panelist was Jeff Guillot, EVP, Product & Technology at Hoovers.
Jeff discussed how a traditional content provider sees user-generated content affecting their business.

Hoovers has launched four products in the user-generated content space:
Bizmology Blog: daily postings by editors
Hoovers business tool for publishers: Improved tools to allow publishers to integrate Hoovers content into their products.
Integration of Hoovers Insight into the Salesforce.com platform.
Relationship Mining (Hoovers Connect) - in limited beta: free service for users - a visual tool to link your existing network to Hoovers content (a la LinkedIn).

Today, Hoovers uses these tools to drive traffic in a brand-relevant way by combining Hoovers editorial expertise with user-generated content.

While user-generated content is still in its early stages, it's clear that companies like ITToolbox, Jigsaw and LinkedIn are seeing real revenues in this space.

Today and Wednesday I'm at the SIIA Information Industry Summit in NYC.
Cipriani has wireless, so I will aim to get a few posts up during the conference. 
Be sure to monitor the following blogs for more details on the conference:

John Blossom at Shore Communications
Ken Doctor's Content Bridges
David Meerman Scott's WebInkNow
Larry Schwartz at the Newstex blog
Rafat Ali at Paid Content

The second previews panel focused on emerging companies in the Content Delivery space.  Guy Nouri, CEO of video publishing network Dragonfly, led off with a demo of their hosted solution for enterprise delivery of multimedia content. 

Neal Goldman, CEO of Inform Technologies, provided an overview of their platform for tagging unstructured content.  The technology uses semantic tagging to identify topics, companies, persons, industries, places and products within an article.  The tagged content creates “Smart Links”, embedded links and topics, each of which generates a new search.  For publishers, this approach creates more content for SEO and additional click-throughs within their site.  Inform is in use by the Washington Post, ComputerWorld, Answers.com and other leading content providers.

Next up was Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks.  Pando is a P2P network for distribution of large media.  You can think of Pando as Skype for video.  Levitan and Pando have applied a freemium model.  They have a free downloadable client and offer 1 GB of free space for consumers.  That approach has helped them gain more than 3 million installed users to-date, with 250,000 new users per week.  Their plan is to grow the business through advertising, premium services and technology licensing.

For more coverage of the SIIA conference, monitor the blogs of Larry Schwartz, John Blossom and Rafat Ali at PaidContent later this week.

The first of the SIIA company previews was the “Content Creators” panel.  Presenters include Bill McNulty, President of financial services lead generation company Decision Tree Media, Steve Marder, CEO of Swicki provider Eurekster and Near-Time CEO Reid Conrad.  The most compelling presentation of the group came from Tom Aley, CEO of Generate, Inc.

Aley, formerly with Reed Elsevier Ventures, formed Generate, Inc. a few years ago with  twin brother Darr Aley.    Generate is a web 2.0 company aiming to provide greater context to content.  Generate does three things:

1. Discovery: crawling of more than 75M web domains and 150k news articles per day, tagging people, products, job listings and more.
2. Qualify: Reassembling these entities and facts into a database of more than 8 million companies
3. Connect: mapping relationships between people and companies.

They have been able to compile deep biographical information.  As Tom describes it, “...think ZoomInfo, but de-duped.”

Generate has deployed a Toolbar with what they call the “G2 Button”.  When reading a piece of content on the web, a user clicks the G2 button and the product will read and perform real-time information extraction.  The extracted entities (people, companies, products, etc.) generate automatic links to the data in the Generate database, allowing users to easily link to company or biographical data.

The product today is in use at more than 40 management consultancies and financial institutions.

SIIA Previews kicked off today with a session on Deal Trends.  Red Herring Editor Joel Dreyfuss served as moderator of a panel including venture capital and private equity professionals.

To no one’s surprise, Dreyfuss described an environment where private equity or corporate acquisition were the end-game, not IPO.  While we have yet to see a Web 2.0 IPO, there were four acquisitions last year, led by Google’s purchase of YouTube.  Geographically, Dreyfuss described a venture investing environment where North America was still the leader, but where China, India and Israel were seeing significant funding.  Europe continues to be the laggard.

One concern raised by Dreyfuss was that today’s big companies were not large employers.  Google today employs about nine or ten thousand people, compared to a company like Hewlett Packard, with more than 90,000 employees.

Will Porteous, of RRE Ventures, talked about the types of companies they are investing in.  An early stage investor, RRE likes to make Series A or B investments and has a 5-7 year time horizon.  RRE still likes infrastructure investments and sees opportunities in storage, where the technologies available to data centers are now being pushed down market to small businesses and consumers.  Will also talked leveraging content in unique areas, such as a recent investment in Storm Risk Solutions, who allow you to hedge weather risk.

Rene Benedetto of Halyard Capital, a middle market private equity firm, discussed how ROI-driven marketing was creating opportunities for companies in lead generation and interactive marketing.  Halyard has created a platform company, Halyard Education Marketing, providing lead generation for universities and supporting services.

Lex Miron, banker at CIBC, described the dearth of strong management.  As he put it, they’d “rather have an “A” Management team and a “B” concept” than the opposite.

All of the panelists spoke of how social software has become the hot area, but Justin Sadrian, of Warburg Pincus, indicated that they’re “not yet sure whether companies will be able to monetize those social networks”.

In closing, all the panelists felt that the recent double-digit multiples would continue in the near-term, but shared concern that the leverage of recent deals was cause for concern.

This week is the annual SIIA Information Industry Summit in New York. 

New for this year is a 1/2 day event Monday afternoon entitled SIIA Previews.  SIIA Previews focuses on emerging companies in the content and content technology space. 

Previews kicks off with a look at the deal making side of the content industry.  Joel Dreyfuss, of Red Herring, moderates a panel including Rene Benedetto of Halyard Capital, Justin Sadrian of Warburg Pincus, RRE Ventures General Partner Will Porteous, Relegence President Steve Fadem and Lex Miron of event host CIBC World Markets.

Following that are three sessions each featuring startup companies in the space:
* Content Creators, will include brief presentations by lead generation firm Decision Tree Media, vertical search provider Generate, social search provider Eurekster and social software provider Near-Time. 
* Content Delivery Companies will feature rich media provider Pando Networks, tagging software Inform Technologies, RealTimeMatrix and video network platform Dragonfly.
* Content Protectors features presentations by iCopyright, Attributor and Cranium Softworks.

Fred Wilson will deliver the keynote.

Connectivity permitting, I plan to blog the presentations and discussions.

If you're attending, I hope to see you there.

RevolutionHealth, the health portal announced 18 months ago by Steve Case, has now launched in "preview" mode.

The site is using a freemium model, by which the content will initially be available free, with premium services to be added as they move to launch.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Case hopes that consumers will eventually pay around $100 per year for a subscription to the site.  The official launch date is planned for April.

So, who needs another health portal?  Well, considering that healthcare remains among the fastest growing market segments and that there are only a few players (such as WebMD) focused on the consumer segment, there's a lot of room for a new entrant. 

Steve Case being, well, Steve Case, has aspirations higher than simply generating revenues.  According to his blog, Case aims to make this a "Company that can change the world."  He shares that his interest in the segment was born out of his brother Dan's being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2001, and the challenges Dan and his family dealt with in simply dealing with the bureaucracies of today's health care environment.  Before you dismiss such aspirations, they're not that different from those Case had in the early days of AOL, before anyone had heard of the Internet.

The site has five main areas: Healthy Living, Conditions & Treatments, Doctors & Hospitals, Insurance and a Toolkit containing more than one hundred tools from simple weight loss calculators to a group of 115 assessments.  There's an online health portfolio, which will allow users to store their health history and a health expense manager to track health care expense and insurance information.  RevolutionHealth also includes an offline component.  There's a telephone-based support option to help you locate a physician, answer health questions or navigate medical bills and paperwork.  Your personal health records may be accessed in multiple ways so you'll always have
access in emergency.  Users who sign up for the preview can have full access for free for the remainder of 2007.

The Health Care market is getting more and more complex (just look at the new Medicare drug programs as an example).  There's a clear need for better tools to track and manage health care information.  Assuming that they can give users comfort with privacy and security issues, RevolutionHealth could be well-positioned to fill that need.  Subscription models are risky in the consumer space, but if they can gain traction during the initial free period, I think they'll do well in conversion.

Meanwhile, WebMD is not sitting on their hands.  They also announced new services this week, including a "Personal Health Record" tool.  Increased competition in this space should be good for all consumers.

Thanks to Tim O'Reilly for the heads up on this one.

The Visual Communications Lab at IBM has launched into alpha a social visualization platform called Many Eyes, led by data visualization gurus Martin Wattenberg and Fernando Viegas.

The site falls into a new category, described by its designers as "social data analysis".  Similar in ways to Swivel, profiled here a few weeks ago, Many Eyes allows users to upload data sets, which then can be used by other users to create visual analyses.  While Swivel's visual tools are more rudimentary graphs and charts, Many Eyes uses some of the more advanced forms of data visualization including Treemaps and Bubble Charts.

Like Swivel, Many Eyes has been seeded with various data sets, many from government data sources.  Users can upload their own data and use that posted by others.

Data visualization is starting to take hold, after years of fits and stops.  One of the strengths of the Many Eyes site is the diversity of visual maps which they offer.  No single map is appropriate for all data or for all users.  Many users still prefer simple rows and columns for viewing data, while others take more quickly to visualization.  New tools like Many Eyes and Swivel, along with established visualization tools like Grokker, offer compelling ways to navigate and mine data.

 Startup Farecast has announced the release of Fare Guard, a predictive analytics tool that allows consumers to hedge against airfare price changes.

Farecast was launched out of research by text-mining guru Oren Etzioni and students at the University of Washington.  The system is built on a data warehouse that stores flight pricing for flights on all airlines between more than 75 airports.  In total, they have collected more than 150 billion data points.

A user searches for flights and Farecast will provide it with its prediction for that fare (whether it's likely to go up or down by a specific amount) and a confidence score.  The application graphically displays a 90-day history for that fare, along with a recommendation of whether to buy or wait.

Now, Farecast has added a new feature, putting its money where its predictions are.  Farecast will allow users to purchase a "Fare Guard", a hedge for fares that it predicts to either drop or remain steady for the coming 7 days.  If the fares increase during that period and you book your flight at the higher rate, you can submit your Fare Guard for the difference in price.

Though heavily used in CRM to identify cross-selling opportunities (and, of course, in the intelligence community), predictive analytics still has yet to become a mainstream application.  Publishers and aggregators who capture transactional data may find predictive analytics and data mining capabilities can dramatically increase their value proposition.

About a year ago, David Meerman Scott released a free e-book called "The New Rules of PR".  He posted it to his WebInkNow blog as a free download. 

It became an overnight viral marketing success, with more than 15,000 downloads the first week and more than 150,000 downloads over the course of the past year.  For those who haven't read it, the New Rules describes how smart companies are using press releases to reach consumers directly, rather than as a means of attracting traditional media attention.  Web practitioners have become skilled at leveraging SEO-rich press releases to drive traffic to their sites.

David has just released an updated second edition of the e-book, also available free at his blog.  And, of course, since David follows his own guidance, there's a press release describing the new version.  The second edition includes a forward by David McInnis, CEO of PRWeb (a Vocus company).  This version also features a snazzy new color cover as you can see above.

David has also posted a link to the presale of the companion hardcover book, due this spring.  In addition to having an even snazzier cover, the book will include a number of case studies, some of which have been previewed on David's blog in recent months., like this one on CruiseCompete.  If it's anything like his previous book, Cashing In With Content,it's sure to be a practical and relevant read.

While the Arctic Monkeys have been credited (on this blog and elsewhere) with leveraging the web and social sites to launch their music career, they're not the only ones to have done so.

Next week, one of my favorite new performers, Lily Allen, will have her CD released in the United States.  Lily Allen's ska-influenced alt-hip-hop has gained her a strong audience in the UK and I expect her to see similar success in the U.S. markets.  Her music is tinged with sarcasm, humor and a bit of pretentiousness as might come from a 21-year old who seems wise beyond her years.  While the song Smile was her first big UK hit, I prefer the darker LDN and humorous Knock em Out.

What makes the Lily Allen story unique is how she leverage social networks not only for publicity, but as an online focus group to shape her first CD, Alright Still.  According to this Billboard article, Allen posted new tunes to her MySpace page, then gauged the feedback from her fans.  In fact, that process helped her validate some of the songs against the advice of her record label.  To reach that success, Allen apparently spent hours each night online, chatting with fans and reading their comments.  While much was made last week of the new blog launched by 73-year old Marriott CEO Bill Marriott, that seems like just an online press release by someone who admittedly cannot type. 

To really engage your audience using social software requires a significant commitment.  Clearly, Lily Allen is an early success story of that process.  For those who haven't heard her music yet, I'd suggest you give a listen at her website.  For those looking at how to leverage technology to launch a new brand, you might learn a few things by following her path.

Every senior manager in the media or publishing industry the past ten years has struggled with decisions about how to align their organization for e-media.  Do you have your print ad sales team sell online or bring in a dedicated team?  Is SEO a core competency or do you use outside consultants?  Should we centralize our web development or let each brand do its own thing?

And while it seems like we’ve debated this issue forever (or at least for a decade), the deliberation continues today.

Executive recruiter Cara Erickson (Managing Partner of New Coordinates) and Outsell Lead Analyst Chuck Richard have collaborated on a fascinating new study, “Creating the E-Media Organization.”  The study is based upon interviews with CEOs and e-Media executives at 18 magazine and news organizations.

The authors describe four potential frameworks:
1. Publisher’s pure play: the e-Media organization is completely separate from the traditional print organization, with its own P&L, reporting to the CEO.
2. Centralized structure with a corporate e-Media group servicing each of the business units.
3. A hybrid/matrix approach with online P&L’s rolled into the brand P&L’s.
4. Brand-integrated, where the e-Media function is fully integrated into each brand.

The “pure-play” approach was common in the mid-90’s as publishers sought to take advantage of this new, disruptive channel.  According to the study, only 2 of the 18 companies surveyed still employed a pure play model today.

The hybrid approach is the most commonly used today, with eleven of the eighteen companies surveyed using it.  In this model, the online business may have a separate P&L but it is rolled up into the brand P&L.  The benefit of this approach is that the online leaders interact with the traditional business leaders, which should lead to knowledge transfer over time.

The brand-integrated structure is clearly the preferred model in the long-term.  Business leaders should be focused on brands, not on platforms.  That being said, there are risks for companies looking to rapidly move to this approach without having the talent (both executive and through the ranks) to support it.

The report delves deeply into the leadership skills required to run today’s diversified media business.  The authors discuss the value of “straddlers”, whom they define as “executives with a traditional media background, but who’ve spent the past 5-10 years in interactive media.”  As they point out, not only are straddlers crucial in understanding the issues the business faces, but they are critical magnets in attracting online talent, otherwise hesitant to bring their digital media skills to an old media brand.  The need to infuse traditional media organizations with digital understanding often creates conflicts with the traditional publishing model, where management comes up through the ranks.  More and more, traditional publishers are going outside their organizations for new leadership, or finding that talent through acquisition of online properties.

Either way, the survey describes a huge imbalance between supply and demand.  Virtually all the companies in the study had more online vacancies than they were able to fill and one executive indicated that the “demand for e-talent is five times greater than the supply”.  The change in skills cut across all aspects of the business – in addition to the obvious needs in marketing, product and technology, the dynamic nature of online media has had a similar impact on sales and editorial.  Perhaps most critical, the study points out the need for nimble leadership at the top, capable of making fast decisions and recalibrating on the fly.  Or, as Outsell describes it, the need to “fail faster”.

For those who’ve spent the past decade leading media and publishing organizations through change, these issues are not new.  What may surprise some is the fact that ten years in, we’re still struggling to solve these issues and most media companies have yet to fully integrate online with their traditional platforms.  More importantly, the next five years will likely bring a more rapid pace of change than the past five.  Web services have lowered the barrier to entry for online content, so you’ll see more competitive pressures than in the past.

While there's no simple plan for managing this change, it's helpful to understand where you stand in comparison to your peers. 

To order a copy of the study, visit Outsell.

If you’re an organization seeking digital leaders to fuel growth, or if you’re a straddler (and if you’re a reader of this blog, there’s a good chance of that) seeking new opportunities, reach out to at New Coordinates.

Well, it didn't take long for new CEO David Calhoun to make an imprint on VNU.  The Dutch publisher has decided to drop the VNU name, adopting instead the name of its leading brand, Nielsen.

The move makes a lot of sense.  The VNU name has never been part of the branding, with each business unit retaining its own identity (AdWeek, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, etc).  Meanwhile, the Nielsen name is a compelling brand in the e-media space, with its NetRatings, Buzzmetrics and AC Nielsen products.

Alacra is currently recruiting a new Vice President, e-Commerce.

Reporting to the CEO, this role leads the Alacra e-Commerce team and is responsible for development and growth of our e-Commerce products.

Candidates should have a strong marketing background with at least three years e-Commerce experience and meet the following requirements:

• 5+ years marketing experience with at least three years leading e-commerce initiatives
• Successful track record in online marketing, including search engine optimization, online advertising, e-mail marketing and affiliate marketing.
• Deep understanding of web analytics tools; experience with HBX (WebSideStory) a plus
• Knowledge of website design and development, user flow and information architecture and their impact on the customer experience.
• Extensive Project and/or Product Management experience
• Aggressive risk-taker with documented record of success
• Experience leading technical teams
• Bachelors or Masters in a relevant domain
• Familiarity with Adobe Photoshop, HTML and JavaScript a plus.
• Knowledge of content industry and/or financial markets a plus

For immediate consideration, please email your resume and salary history to .

For more information on this role, see the full position listing on the Alacra website.

Yahoo acquired MyBlogLog yesterday in a $10M deal that's been rumored since late last year.
The acquisition adds to Yahoo 's presence in the social software space, while also providing some new capabilities for advertising on blogs.

At its most basic, MyBlogLog is a social networking application that allows users to create a profile and take that profile with them to various blogs, "joining" them.  You've probably seen photos of recent readers on Content Matters and other blogs.  These are readers who have active MyBlogLog profiles.  Once you join a blog community, you can view the profiles of other members and see what other communities they are participating in.  It's a pretty compelling way to discover relevant content you might not be aware of.

The other side of MyBlogLog is the statistics they provide to the participating blog sites.  You can easily see how many visitors you've had, how they got to your site and what they've clicked on once they got there.  It's not the full metrics you'd get with HBX or even Performancing, but it's a nice snapshot.  You can even get a view of what other pages (on other participating blogs) your community members have visited.  It's sort of like a private Digg just for people with like interests.

As they've done with Flickr, Delicious and others, the initial plan is for Yahoo to keep MyBlogLog a standalone entity.  On day one the only change you'll see is the ability to login with your Yahoo ID, rather than creating a separate ID.  Over time, they will further integrate it with their other social networking applications.

In the meantime, you can join the Content Matters community to test it out.

For more on MyBlogLog, see earlier reviews from TechCrunch, ContentMatters and A VC.
For more on the acqusition, see posts by Om Malik, Search Engine Land and Rafat.

I batted around .500 on my themes for 2006; here’s hoping I can do better with my predictions and themes in 07.  A few of these are carryovers from last year.

Vertical Search: Google Co-op Custom Search Engines will make this attractive for many new entrants, while regular Google results continue to get worse, due to the spam pages out there.

Web Advertising: The adoption of Ajax will make advertising more complex in 2007.  Page Views will no longer be the ultimate measure for advertisers.  In addition to Ajax, the use of widgets will often mean the separation of content from its site.  I’m sure that the market will come up with better ways to monetize the user experience (and the metrics to support it), but in the near-term it will lead to more confusion among both advertisers and sites.

Further consolidation in the Content Industry: 2007 will bring more M&A in the content industry.  I think that there will be a few big names in the mix, with either AOL or Yahoo being acquired (or possibly merging with one another).

There will be a roll-up of blogging tools: With so many users, I’m shocked that bloggers till have to use a non-integrated set of tools for authoring, distributing, searching for and tracking posts.  This segment is overdue for a rollup of say, Feedburner, SixApart, MyBlogLog and Technorati.  Yes, I predicted this for 2006, so it’s long overdue. Other acquisitions I’d like to see?  How about Amazon buying Last.fm, as part of  an effort to provide a DRM-free competitor to iTunes?

MySpace usage plummets: The signs are on the wall.  First NewsCorp bought them, now Time recognizes them as part of the “Person of the Year” feature.  Heck, even your mom has heard of it.  That means your kids will soon be dumping their myspace page and moving to the next new thing.  Meanwhile, the long-rumored, still-to-be-named consortium-managed YouTube competitor, if it ever launches, will implode almost immediately for the obvious reasons (big egos + conflicting goals + power sharing among unequals = failure).  That doesn’t equate to good news for YouTube, however; as media companies pull their content off YouTube, it becomes a home largely for fake porn and video spam.

RSS finally gains adoption: OK, so this one was on the 2006 list as well, but with RSS at the heart of Microsoft Vista and the new Yahoo Mail, the feeds will become ubiquitous even if the name and orange logo does not. 

Widgets gain prominence: While many web 2.0 applications were made available as widgets in 2006, most of them were niche tools, such as Yahoo Widgets, Google Gadgets and standalone widgets such as MyBlogLog.  I think that 2007 will be the year that widgets are adopted for brand advertising and application development and go beyond the realm of blog bling.  For content providers this creates the opportunity (necessity?) to make your content portable as users continue to move away from centralized portals.

The drop in newspaper readership accelerates: Print circulation will continue to plummet as newspaper companies struggle to redefine their value proposition.  While some will continue to see a rise in online readers, it’s not enough to make up for the drop in print revenue.  I’d expect to see ongoing M&A in this segment, as private equity firms continue to believe they can drive cost out of the business, but valuations will plummet as compared to 2006. 

I've been blogtagged (the blogosphere's version of a chain letter) by Steve.  So, here goes - five things that you probably don't know about me.

1. I began my career with an online service (LegiTech - sub of McClatchy) in 1985; only later did I "backslide" to print media with Nelson (now Thomson Financial), where we followed the traditional print-to-electronic conversion.
2. My athletic career peaked early when, at age 12, I got dunked on by Chocolate Thunder (aka Darryl Dawkins).  It's been downhill ever since.
3. I collect 20th century political campaign pins and related materials.  My prize possession - an unopened pack of Adlai Stevenson cigarettes (circa 1952).
4. I once had a head-on collision with a speedboat - while driving a car.
5. My first plane flight didn't occur until a business trip when I started my first job out of school.

In an effort to find bloggers who haven't already been tagged - I'll pass this along to Shannon Holman, Steve Arnold, Jake Harris, Larry Schwartz and Ed Stevenson.