David Evans’ paper, Markets with Two-Sided Platforms, discusses how these two-sided platform businesses serve distinct groups of customers and need each other in some way. They provide these customers a real or virtual meeting place, and they facilitate the interactions between members of these customer groups. They essentially act as intermediaries between the two groups […]

It costs a bloody fortune to produce a television series like Mad Men. All those cast members, the period costumes, the smart writers. Right now production companies make these efforts profitable by doing deals with networks like A&E that sell advertising spots. Many of us are recording our favorite shows and watching them later, […]

Lots of people have been talking about social sites cannibalizing search. I’ve addressed this in a prior post since it comes up a lot. eMarketer published a report today that has two interesting findings. First, Google, Bing and Yahoo have little to worry about. They still represent nearly all (like 97.8%) of the search traffic […]

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. […]

When I heard that the Moldavian kids had organized a veritable revolution through twittering each other I thought that I should recant my views that twittering would last about as long as the hula hoop. But then I saw that Ashton Kutcher has become king of the twitters. Could Twitter have a better advertisement than […]

Media companies are engaging in a bit of co-opetition as they form ad networks for selling advertising across member properties. (See the recent AP article Media Groups Share Content in Ad Deals.)
Sometimes competitors are getting in bed together because they figure, I guess, that they don’t want to lose the money for selling […]

Steve Jobs has taken a lot of flak since his speech at MacWorld on Tuesday. Of greatest concern is whether Apple’s streak of luck in the digital media space has run its course. The content providers that make its iTunes store valuable and get people to buy those pricey iPods have been bailing in […]

Comcast announced today its ambitious new plan to allow on demand access to a “nearly limitless” supply of movies and TV shows via both television and the internet. Dubbed Project Infinity, the goal is to bolster Comcast’s competitive position with satellite and telcos - and it hopes its stock price in the process - […]

What’s it going to take to get people to watch Internet video on their televisions?
Today’s Wall St. Journal has an interesting article that talks about the problem and offers some suggestions based on talking to executives in the business. These range from reducing the number of boxes, keeping it simple, and making the Internet […]

Getting everyone on board is one of the biggest problems faced by the catalysts that are trying to shake up and create new industries. Randall Stross’s article in Sunday’s New York Time—Pass the Popcorn. But Where’s the Movie.—highlights the problem faced by video-on-demand. The cable television guys needed to get content owners—the studios that make […]