I suppose dinosaurs were pretty disoriented in their final years roaming the earth so maybe we shouldn’t be too critical of the newspaper industry today.
Still the fact that the WSJ publisher is lashing out at Google as the cause of the newspaper death spiral is unsettling. Sure, Google has been a prominent player in […]

Current thinking in the newspaper biz is that the cure to what ails them is to figure out how to get some of the people to pay for some of the content. In other words, keep some stuff for free, but charge for the stuff that people really want. Not a bad strategy, and […]

According to this blogger, GMOOT is the battle cry heard across marketing departments everywhere with respect to social networking. GMOOT is the acronym for “get me one of those” which this blogger characterizes as what’s fueling the interest in social networking activities. She goes on to say that the end result is that most organizations […]

Well, depends on who you ask. The New York Times seems to think it has a shot at drawing eyeballs away from traditional television. But, I am not so sure. So, in service to all you readers of the Catalyst Code Blog, I took time out of my busy afternoon to check out nextnewnetwork. […]

A lot of those close to Twitter are now saying that their monetization scheme is to capitalize on its WOM power and make it easy for people to buy the products that their followers talk about. Couple of comments about that.
First, people tend not to mind adverts on Twitter. Maybe it’s because they are […]

I figured I’d take the Twitter plunge despite my skepticism. I’ve been at it a week to help promote FinReg21.com our new media property on financial services regulation and its reform. Here’s a preliminary report. The good news is that it is fun and easy. Knocking out 140 character comments is pretty easy and the […]

Yesterday’s article about Facebook’s new search feature was as much a discussion of its strategic direction as it was the new feature. The article spent a lot of time explaining the travails around Facebook’s attempt to be more like Twitter and how its next update will eschew that in favor of the features that existed […]

The news of the RIF at MySpace puts front and center the need for social networks to adopt new business models to keep them afloat. As this news suggests, treating social networks as just another ad-supported on line channel puts them at risk when ad fortunes go south. More importantly, it fails to capitalize upon […]

Interesting interview in yesterday’s WSJ with John Malone. The topic: how to get web visitors to pay for content on the web. The conclusion: advertising as a business model won’t cut it but there is a way to get consumers to ante up for content if bundled with what Malone describes as community and connectivity.
Interesting […]

Hearst Magazines is following a ‘contrarian strategy’ when it comes to its online strategy and pricing its print magazines according to an article in Monday’s New York Times. Hearst has raised newsstand prices for most of its magazines, sometimes significantly. And rather than sticking all of its content online it has been pretty coy. Online […]