SXSW 2010: Five Good Minutes

Instead of blogging this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW), I’ve decided to record segments with folks I meet with the express purpose of answering one question: What’s the one thing, in your media sphere, that excites you the most. I’ll be gathering a few of these each day. Some I’ll post here. Some I’ll post [...]

Why Analytics (Mostly) Don’t Matter

Analytics are important to me. I’m a child of the Internet. A Web nerd. A baseball geek. I love me some numbers.
But numbers aren’t all they are cracked up to be particularly online and really particularly when you’re trying to build a business around them. Any salesperson will tell you that.
There is information to be [...]

Trading on Influence

While I was in London, I had the opportunity to visit Joanna Geary at The London Times. We’d been trying to meet since South by Southwest Interactive and finally — FINALLY — we made that happen.
The Times, part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, is doing what his other media properties are doing: searching for the new [...]

Selling “Bits”

“(T)he problem with that is that Wired owner Conde Nast is taking the loss without leading its readers to anything that generates sales.” – James Ledbetter, “Free to be Ignored“
I was discussing the Business of Media this morning and as always the topic turned towards sustainable business models for the industry, emphasis on sustainable. The advertising model is [...]

Building Media: The Model is Broken

I was talking with Katz Kiely, one of the minds behind the b.tween media convergence conference I’ll be attending in London next month, and she piqued my interest when she mentioned a speaker who will be discussing how current media companies need to re-assess how they build and judge interactive, digital projects.
The reason: it takes some [...]

Wolfram Alpha: Analyzing News, Search + Tech

My buddy David Thomas just sent me this search comparison of The New York Times  versus Apple (courtesy of Wolfram Alpha).
I added Google to the mix because search is the closest thing we have to interactive, data-driven story production right now.
Then I added Gannett just because I can.

Weird Tales About Internet Coupons

I was trolling through my inbox today looking for something interesting to write about when I came across this press release: Internet Coupon Usage Up 83% in American Households.
Normally I would have blown right past this but I’ve been thinking about my own shopping habits recently because I’ve loaded all my finances into Quicken. (Side [...]

“How Much More Glue Can We Sell Them?”

Another reason I’ve been so MIA is that I’m digging through a whole series of books (which means you’re going to be seeing more book reviews in the near future).
There’s so much interesting thinking on globalization — and how technology has changed not only where we do business, but how we do business. It’s a [...]

Outsourcing to India

Image via Wikipedia
I’ve been noticably absent from the blog for the past few weeks, which I’ve explained in the last post. This should begin to change in the next few months as I’ve taken some steps to lighten my research load.
Yesterday, I spoke with two managers — and I use that term, but I’m not [...]

6 Reasons the BBC Gets the Web

I’ve loved the BBC for many years.
If I had a dream job it would living somewhere in England working with their digital teams and thinking up new ways to get people information. They are the model for what should be done.
Before we go any farther down the line, I realize their business and management structure [...]

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