The Catalyst Code

In its latest stick ‘em in the eye approach to the mobile industry Google came out swinging at a recent forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission Google Pushes Open Mobile Platform at FTC Event.
According to Rich Miner, who’s heading their Android mobile software platform initiative, when someone controls a platform “it stifles innovation” and […]

With the abrupt stop of the mating dance between Microsoft and Yahoo we can talk about other questions about the future of the online ad business.
Here are some of mine.
For social networking: How much will eyeballs however measured sell for on social networking sites—will they be more or less valuable than the […]

The New York Times surprised analysts Thursday with a small loss instead of the anticipated roughly $24 million in quarterly profits. Today’s Wall St. Journal paints a miserable picture for the graying lady as well Media General and the Tribune on Page B1 (subscription only, see http://online.wsj.com for related news).
For anyone, including the billionaires […]

Google’s Q1 profits shot up 30 percent and beat the Street’s earnings estimates. This comes after all the hand-wringing about the reported dropoff in Google’s search-ad clicks reported by comScore. As I noted in What’s Down with Google? investors still seem to be figuring out what makes Google tick—lots of ingredients go into maximizing the […]

Two recent articles on mobile bar codes illustrate the importance of a key catalyst principle—you have to get the pricing balance right for your stakeholders. A trial of mobile bar codes among students at Case Western University flopped in part because of price—students were unsure how much downloading the barcodes was going to cost […]