Content Matters

This year's Buying & Selling eContent conference was a good networking opportunity in a beautiful locale, as always.  But, as Steve points out, there was little provocative discussion this year.  In my post-conference survey, where it asks for the three best speakers, I listed them as John Blossom, Patrick Spain and David Meerman Scott.  While all three always have something interesting to say, they are also the voices that I read and speak to somewhat regularly.  For me, there were no "aha" moments at this year's BSeC. 

That said, this is primarily a networking conference and the conversations, both in the formal sessions and at the informal venues, were compelling and interesting.  I commend Dick Kaser for his efforts to reshape the conference around these conversations, which were a big improvement over past years.

The Tuesday lineup at BSeC looks strong.

The morning starts with a roundtable, moderated by Marydee Ojala, part II of the "New Media Models in Practice" session.  It features E&Y's Mike Stelzer, Jim McGinty  of Cambridge Information Group and consultant Cindy Hill.

Rafat Ali will follow with this morning's Think Piece.  Rafat follows some faster-moving market segments and I expect (hope) his piece to be controversial and thought provoking.

Tolman Geffs of Jordan Edmiston and Bobbie Goering, librarian at energy provider Exelon will follow with a discussion of the impact of mergers. 

The obligatory discussion of content piracy wraps up the morning, but with a slightly different spin.  Corilee Christou of Cygnus Business Media will talk about "Piracy as a Business Model - What's to be learned from the Pirates".

After lunch, the conference concludes with a keynote from David Meerman Scott, on his "New Rules of Marketing and PR".

For more coverage of BSeC, check the following blogs:
John Blossom's ContentBlogger
Rafat Ali's PaidContent

Steve Goldstein on the AlacraBlog

Monday afternoon at BSeC, we held a series of “Knowledge Cafes”.  This session was a new format, based upon a discussion format by David Gurteen.

The format of a Knowledge Café is to have a facilitator provide a brief (5-10 minute) introduction to a topic, then split the participants into small groups of 4-5 people each, to have their own discussion around it.  After 30-40 minutes, you then bring together the members of the individual discussion groups into a larger group to continue the discussion.

I had the pleasure of leading a Knowledge Café on Vertical Search, with about 15-18 participants.

We talked about how the quality of GYM search was diminishing, with shopping and spam sites dominating results.  While no one will likely displace Google for consumer search, there are many opportunities for vertical search, particularly topical search.

It was also discussed how publishers were well-suited to vertical search, as they can leverage their understanding of niche markets and their editorial expertise in site selection and tagging.

The group agreed that the biggest challenge to building an effective vertical search engine was in the tagging and development of taxonomies and ontologies.  It was suggested that those interested in vertical search should invest an hour or so building one using the free Google Co-op Custom Search Engines.  This will let them learn about the process, while also seeing some of the challenges.

The new Knowledge Café format seemed to be much more effective than the larger discussion groups of the past.  Thanks to Dick Kaser and David Gurteen for introducing the new format.

At BSeC, John Blossom closed the morning with a 15-minute “Think Piece” entitled “Chasing the Mammoth”.  The talk focused on the redefinition of publishing in a social media ecology.

Using the analogy of global climate change and how, in the time of the ice age, people were nomads and owning land was unimportant, John talked about how we are now in an unstable business climate with shifting resources and global trade.  In this market, owning IP is no longer important and the walled gardens and licensing deals of yesterday’s stable market are no longer relevant.

John described how “Social Media powers nomadism in publishing”, moving from corporate production to enabling individual and institutional production in shifting contexts. 

John showed examples of how user-defined context are the new “mammoth”, including:,
* Using Yahoo Pipes to create a custom publication of hedge fund news. 
* Using LinkedIn Answers (with a question I had posted a month or so ago), to show how leveraging a network of peers, I had gathered feedback on books on competitive strategy. 
* Voxant’s Newsroom, where users can grab licensed video content by automatically generating a snippet of code which users can place on their blog or website.
* ASP community builders like Near-time and Ning, which allow you to create a private “MySpace” community.

In closing, he described the “Mammoth culture” as leaner and meaner, tribal, collaborative and mobile.  Publishers need to “let their content graze where it needs to” and understand user behavior in ways most do not today.

John showed how he remains one of a handful of people in this industry who“get” the Web 2.0 world and was able to coherently share relevant examples of what publishers can easily be doing today.

Live Blogging from BSeC
No wireless in the conference center (stifles a bit of the user-generated content capability), so posts will be sporadic the next two days.

Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group President Clare Hart kicked off the conference with the opening keynote.  Clare focused on three key areas:
1. Major changes in the industry
2. What buyers and sellers need to do to adapt
3. What the Dow Jones Enterprise Group is doing

Clare enumerated keys for success in Web 2.0: innovation, simplicity, continuous evolution and accessibility.  She used the term prosumer to frame people who were both producers and consumers of content.  Key for success in the web 2.0 world will be engaging with these prosumers in a way that is easy to use, fast and accessible via both desktop and mobile platforms.

On the Dow Jones front, Clare spoke of efforts to move towards a web 2.0 world, but today those remain fairly limited, for example, making more content available on a mobile platform.

She closed her keynote by posing three challenges to the attendees:
1. Come away from the conference with three ways to transform your organization into a web 2.0 organization.
2. Consider the best ways to engage with prosumers and build communities (whether social or technological)
3. Brainstorm with colleagues (and even competitors) about new business models for your industry.

Today kicks off the annual Buying & Selling eContent conference at the Camelback Inn in Scottsdale.

Today's events open with a keynote by Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group CEO Clare Hart.

Later this morning, Michele Manafy hosts a discussion on new media models (being 2007, can we finally drop that "new media" term and just talk about online strategy?).  Panelists include Hoovers CEO Paul Pellman, Jonathan Hoy of LexisNexis, PennWell SVP Tom Cintorino and Daniel Harrison, Senior Research Associate for Consumer Reports.

The morning wraps up with a think piece from John Blossom of Shore Communications.

After lunch, there will be a series of "Knowledge Cafes", David Gurteen's approach to discussions groups.  I will be facilitating the Vertical Search cafe, so hopefully I will see you there.  Other cafes will be led by Hal Espo, Joe Bremner, Jane Dysart, Martin White, Bill Noorlander, Corey Ferengul and Nikolai Kopelev.

The afternoon wraps up with a keynote by Highbeam CEO Patrick Spain, entitled "Back to the Future: Will All Content Be Free (Again)?"

This Sunday kicks off the annual Buying and Selling eContent (BSeC) Conference at Camelback in Scottsdale.

BSeC is always a great opportunity to catch up with familiar faces in the content industry.  The gorgeous setting makes for a great atmosphere. 

This year's conference has a great lineup, with keynotes by Clare Hart, Patrick Spain and David Meerman Scott.  Speakers and panelists include Hoovers President Paul Pellman, Rafat Ali, Jordan Edmiston MD Tolman Geffs and the inimitable John Blossom.  Full speakers' bios are available at the BSeC wiki.

And, of course, there's the customary Monday evening cocktail party at Mummy Mountain, which always draws a strong crowd.

I'll be leading a "Knowledge Cafe" discussion group Monday afternoon focusing on how to leverage vertical search to drive revenues, so please join in if you plan to be there.

I hope to see you in Scottsdale.

Alacra has launched Alacra Compliance: Batch, a companion module to its interactive Alacra Compliance application.

Alacra Compliance helps financial institutions comply with Know Your Customer provisions of the USA Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act and UK Financial Services Authority.  The Batch module automates the watch list checking portion of the new customer on-boarding process and remediation of existing accounts.

Alacra Compliance: Batch can be configured to use watch lists such as OFAC SDN and Bank of England Sanctions lists as well as premium databases such as World-Check. 

Alacra is exhibiting this week at the Money Laundering Conference in Florida.  If you're there, stop by booth 101 and say hello.

News broken by GigaOm and confirmed by  TechCrunch that TechCrunch has hired FoxInteractive SVP of M&A Heather Harde as CEO.  Founder Michael Arrington will focus on the editorial side of the rapidly growing business.

Over the past few years, TechCrunch has positioned itself as a serious offering, and has made strong inroads into the market that had been dominated by CNET.  For most in the technology community, TechCrunch is the first place to turn for reviews and info on Web 2.0 products.

It will be interesting to watch how the TechCrunch team builds out the business side of the blog.

I've spent the past week or so playing with the new Beta version of My Yahoo.  The new version is a Web 2.0 - ified version of Yahoo's longstanding portal interface.

The new version is very ajaxy.  It takes its cues from RSS readers like NetVibes and PageFlakes.  It's a lot more customizable than the previous version, allowing you to select two, three or four column views and to drag & drop sets of content around the screen.  I'm not sure how many of their users will actually do the customization, after all the more geeky types will probably still use independent apps like NetVibes.

That said, the new facelift has some pretty useful new features.  For one, they made it easy to add topical pages that might be useful for a short period.  For example, I quickly added a "March Madness" page, which I'll delete at the end of the NCAA tournament.

They've also added a new My Yahoo Reader.  This RSS reader, which clearly seems based on NetVibes, is a popup window that allows you to quickly navigate from one article to the next.

Overall, the new beta is an improvement.  While the tech crowd may have moved past My Yahoo, they remain well-positioned to be the Start page for the mainstream user.

Going forward, I'd like to see Yahoo do a better job of integrating some of their acquisitions; a few people have commented on the lack of widgets in this new portal.   For a more comprehensive review of the new My Yahoo, take a look at Read/Write Web's post.

You can sign up for the My Yahoo beta here.

It’s obvious that blogs have secured a substantial position in the content space.  In many instances, blogs are taking readers away from traditional content sources, whether its TechCrunch pulling readers that might have gone to CNET, or any number of political blogs pulling readers from the traditional newsweeklies.

But, even as blogs assume dominant market positions and mindspace, few of them are profitable enough to enable their authors to blog full-time.  PPC advertising with ad networks like Google Adsense might generate a few hundred dollars a month for a blog with strong readership, but that’s about it.  At the same time, few blogs can justify the expense of hiring a full-time ad sales executive.

Federated Media Publishing was launched in 2006 by John Battelle to address this issue.  FM Publishing has assembled a network of blogs for which they sell advertising.  During their first year, 2006, Federated Media had revenues of $4.5 million; for 2007, they are predicting revenues of $30M with several million in net income.  Blogs in the FM Publishing network include tech blogs such as BoingBoing and business blogs like Tom Evslin's Fractals of Change and Fred Wilson's A VC.

Federated Media’s approach is not the first effort in this area.  Other blog networks, such as Nick Denton’s Gawker Media or Jason Calacanis’ Weblogs, Inc., acquired last year by AOL, provide similar advertising leverage, but use a different model.  The Weblogs model built up a set of more than 90 blogs, then paid authors to write for them (typically $300-1,000 per month), with the revenues all going to Weblogs.  Gawker employs a similar model for the consumer space, led by titles such as Gizmodo and Beltway gossip blog Wonkette.

Battelle, who authors his own SearchBlog, was an early blogging success story.  With Federated Media Publishing, he has successfully bridged the Web 2.0 world with traditional media.  While Web 2.0 is all about self-service, widgets and plugins, it’s clear that traditional sales can easily outperform ad networks, provided you have enough ad inventory to sell.  The biggest challenge facing FM Publishing will be whether there are enough properties that remain in the midrange – i.e. large enough to generate substantial advertising revenues, but not large enough to make it worth hiring your own sales force.

Through this aggregated network of blogs, Federated Media Publishing is delivering large publisher results while allowing independent bloggers to remain independent.

The end of winter brings the kickoff of "Conference Season".
This week, Steve is at Open Data and FIMA Reference Data, both here in New York.

Next week, Alacra will be exhibiting at the International Money Laundering Conference in Hollywood, Florida.  AML and Compliance departments at financial institutions have realized that many of the KYC provisions of the Patriot Act, Bank Secrecy Act and UK FSA have information-based solutions.  Screening prospective customers requires effective search of watch lists, news and web content. 

The following week is the annual Buying & Selling eContent conference at Camelback in Scottsdale.  BSeC always attracts a strong crowd of content industry professionals.  And, after the cold February we've had in the northeast, I will welcome the desert heat.

If you plan to be at the AML show or BSeC, be sure to say hello.

If you're in the NYC area, there's an upcoming breakfast you won't want to miss.

The NYU Direct & Interactive Marketing program is sponsoring a breakfast on Wednesday, March 21, focused on Word of Mouth Marketing.  They have a great lineup of speakers scheduled, including Jerry Needel, SVP of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Carla Hendry, co-CEO of Ogilvy North America, Ed Keller, CEO of Word of Mouth Marketing consultants the Keller Fay Group and Jim Nail, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for Cymfony.

If you're looking for ways to gain traction through viral marketing and create a buzz around your products and services, you won't want to miss this event.

The event is free for marketers and NYU students.  The details are:
Wednesday, March 21, 8:00 - 10:00am
NYU - Kimmel Center, Room 914 (located on Washington Square South)
Breakfast will be served.
RSVP: with name, email address and affiliation.

The NY Times has reported that Cisco will be acquiring the technology assets of nearly dormant social networking site Tribe.net.  You may recall that Tribe.net was one of the early players in the social networking arena.  Perhaps best known for the controversy when they banned sexually explicit content, Tribe had largely faded away, with the popularity of mainstream sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Cisco’s reported acquisition of Tribe, following its recent acquisition of social network tools provider Five Across, gives the Company an interesting set of capabilities.  The plan, as outlined in the Times, is for Cisco to leverage these tools to help their corporate clients develop and manage community sites for their users. 

Just as users are moving away from destination sites (as described in Fred Wilson’s deportalization post), the bet is that we will see similar changes in the social networking arena.  Destination sites like MySpace and YouTube may still be strong gathering places for teens, but corporations looking to communicate with clients will want to bring those capabilities into their own environments.

At first blush, the acquisitions seem odd for Cisco.  Other than their linguistic pairing, social networking and networking have little in common.  That being said, social networks can obviously drive quite a bit of Internet traffic and Cisco knows how to monetize the bits and bytes of traffic.  That said, the white label social networking environment is pretty crowded already, as Jeremiah Owyang points out.

It’s clear that social networking is making its way to the corporate world.  On Friday, Reuters announced its intention to build a “financial MySpace” for its Reuters Messaging clients.  Meanwhile, at the recent SIIA Information Industry Summit, Ben Edwards presented some of the ways that IBM has already been leveraging these technologies for both internal and external communications.

It will be interesting to see how Cisco plans to leverage these technologies.  For more on the acquisition, see posts from Rafat Ali, Mashable and TechCrunch.